Given the current prevalence of the disease, how much good does the professor think test, trace and isolate is still doing? Does he offer any suggestion at all as to how long it should go on for? And, if it does have any meaningful effect, presumably this implies some kind of spike when it is actually abandoned - in which case, would we just end up having rules re-imposed again?
Unless you adopt the position advocated by the extremist faction on iSAGE and some very frightened people, i.e. that masks and distancing should continue forever, then they have to stop at some point. The most recent ONS figures estimate that about 98% of the adult population of the UK would now test positive for Covid antibodies. Therefore, if not now, when?
Interestingly, just been on an all-company call this morning. We have these every three months or so. Three months ago, the (anonymous) comments in the chat bar tended to the fearful - why aren't more people wearing masks, there were 50,000 positive tests yesterday, can't the company do more to keep people safe. There weren't many contrary opinions (I held a contrary opinion, but kept it to myself). Today, the balance of the comments (and the 'likes' they were given) was very much in the 'when is the company going to stop requiring us to wear masks to walk around the building, when are we going to stop the social distancing requirements' type questions.
I've said in the past that I don't see any reason to continue with any restrictions; but for a long time I felt like a lone voice at work; now I feel like I'm in the majority.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
There's a universe 'over there', just behind the looking glass:
David Cameron: 24th June 2016: "The British people have voted 52% to 48% to remain in the European Union......" *long pause* ".... however, despite voting and campaigning for Remain as well, I'm reminded the vote was only advisory.... I triggered Article 50, as I'm allowed to do, twenty minutes ago. Fuck you all! We leave the EU in two years time." *Slings back inside No. 10 with Samantha looking on dumbfounded. Slams door behind him*
Never an option.
It was clear before the referendum that there were precisely three options:
(1) We vote to Remain and Remain (2) We vote to Leave and Leave (3) We vote to Leave but Remain.
Some people who favoured option 1 (like Major, Grayling and Scott) preferred option 3 to option 2. They are not democrats.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
At the London Assembly on the Monday she said she wouldn’t release details of what the police knew at the time, by the end of the same week the report was bogged down in redaction. Where everyone said Dick was covering Boris ass, my take is it’s her own force she is trying to protect. And fair enough imo, or would you disagree?
It’s more than just a Bobby stood outside a door guarding that estate from terror attack. The police have known all along what became a political scandal when hit the media many months later. And to be realistic, what they knew was passed right up the chain, not kept at ground level, wasn’t it?
Dick is in a tight spot, I don’t think Khan and Patel should force her out until this gets untangled. In my opinion, or it would feel like the commissioner is being stitched up in my view.
Sadiq Khan should be asked when he first knew of these parties I think. How long did he sit on the knowledge?
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
Mandelson: "New Labour certainly had its arguments in govt. But they were arguments of real substance & they were conducted between real adults & they were resolved by adults
"You don't really have that sense now about a govt that seems to be just ricocheting around with a🛒 PM"
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
Baffling that someone with so little grasp of the law as to how the country is governed spends time on a political website.
Why are you not saying "five and a half years on you just can't bring yourself to admit the countless benefits which brexit has so visibly conferred on every aspect of life in the UK" I wonder?
Falling back on the technically legal position when it differs from the political reality never works. (see also: Boris parties).
When you find yourself saying "technically legal" when you mean "legal" you have already lost.
Now, about those brexit benefits?
Here's the thing. The overriding Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to compromise as part of a large trade body which had political aspirations also. That is, we join North Korea in being more sovereign than, say, France. I imagine 0.4% of the people who voted for Brexit wanted this, they have achieved it, and it is an incontrovertible position. If the country is worse off as a result then that is irrelevant to their view of the world.
Of course the next trade deal that is signed will erode that sovereignty but they are enjoying it while it lasts and I am happy for them.
It is the idiots who voted it for a) economic benefit; b) less immigration; or c) any other reason whatsoever that deserve ire and scorn.
We import products from the EU to sell in the UK. We're also opening up the Irish market and wanted to send samples to our partner in Dublin.
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Because democracy is not an ever-fixed mark. We get to vote all the time. In 2015 we elected a government on a 5 year fixed term. Before the expiry of that fixed term we had had two rerun elections because a succession of rerun PMs refused to accept the result of the previous one.
So apparently it IS democracy to ignore the result of a general election because the winner appointed to a fixed 5 year term didn't like the result. But not democracy to repeat any other votes.
That your argument? Bit thin isn't it?
You're slightly conflating General Elections with Referendums here. General Elections elect the parliament for UP TO five years. This isn't the US. There aren't fixed terms. General elections could be held yearly if wanted. Or twice in a year if you're Harold Wilson.
Referendums, likewise, are just advisory. But the huge danger here is that if these 'advisory' referendums come out with a result you don't like, so you seek to have another. A second referendum with Remain OFF the ballot paper might've been acceptable, but not with.
The counterpoints: I'm sure you're happy if: Wilson had left the EEC in 1976, despite the vote in 1975. Cameron had adopted PR, despite the vote in 2011 (And despite PR not even being on the ballot paper).
Deep down, if referendums are only advisory, why bother having them? If you're not going to follow the advice, its just a waste of time and money. It sets dangerous precidents for future referendums. It will encourage boycots of General Elections and other Referendums. It will disengage people from politics generally.
You can have any colour car you want, as long as its black.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Because democracy is not an ever-fixed mark. We get to vote all the time. In 2015 we elected a government on a 5 year fixed term. Before the expiry of that fixed term we had had two rerun elections because a succession of rerun PMs refused to accept the result of the previous one.
So apparently it IS democracy to ignore the result of a general election because the winner appointed to a fixed 5 year term didn't like the result. But not democracy to repeat any other votes.
That your argument? Bit thin isn't it?
In 2015 we elected 650 MPs, all of whom(*) took their seats. The result was implemented. The length of the parliament being fixed was always a nonsense.
If your argument relies on a mischaracterisation of the reasons for the 2017 and 2019 general elections, I don't think I can help you either.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
Except if it had been a Remain vote and the after the next election a Leave-y parliament was elected, there would have been another referendum. Which is fine, because democracy is a process.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But every GE, and especially ones that are within the five years "invalidates the [previous] vote".
Imagine a Labour manifesto promised to nationalise Tescos and lo the Labour government was elected. But there was an outcry, people defected to the LDs, Greens, Reform (stay with it). A VONC was called and a Cons govt was elected. They decided not to nationalise Tescos.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
"the government" being the one elected in 2015.
Then we had an unnecessary general election.
Which elected a different mix of MPs and a government who needed the support of others to do anything.
Radical idea - if implementing the referendum result was important to May's government, and she had a working majority, would it not have been better to get on with it?
You are describing the entire British electorate - who voted in 2017 for something different to what the voted for in 2015 as "a bitter bad loser".
Honestly I can't understand how some people so confidently comment about democracy whilst demonstrating that they have no clue how our democratic system actually works.
The 2017 election return a vast majority of MPs who were committed to implementing the 2016 result (a significant share of which only made such a committment because they couldn't get elected without doing so). Just because that faction then technically had the legal right to junk their manifesto and become obstructive in the hope of overturning the 2016 result does not mean they were democratically and politically right to do so.
You rely on "MPs can do whatever the hell they want, and screw what the public thinks". Technically correct. Politically unsustainable. Totally undemocratic.
So the latest democratic vote is "totally undemocratic". Gotcha.
No parliament binds its successors. Nor is "should the UK leave the European Union" a mandate for anything beyond that. Most of the wailing and screeching against members of that parliament were because the proposed things like a customs union and single market membership which were 100% compliant with the referendum result.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
Baffling that someone with so little grasp of the law as to how the country is governed spends time on a political website.
Why are you not saying "five and a half years on you just can't bring yourself to admit the countless benefits which brexit has so visibly conferred on every aspect of life in the UK" I wonder?
Falling back on the technically legal position when it differs from the political reality never works. (see also: Boris parties).
When you find yourself saying "technically legal" when you mean "legal" you have already lost.
Now, about those brexit benefits?
Here's the thing. The overriding Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to compromise as part of a large trade body which had political aspirations also. That is, we join North Korea in being more sovereign than, say, France. I imagine 0.4% of the people who voted for Brexit wanted this, they have achieved it, and it is an incontrovertible position. If the country is worse off as a result then that is irrelevant to their view of the world.
Of course the next trade deal that is signed will erode that sovereignty but they are enjoying it while it lasts and I am happy for them.
It is the idiots who voted it for a) economic benefit; b) less immigration; or c) any other reason whatsoever that deserve ire and scorn.
We import products from the EU to sell in the UK. We're also opening up the Irish market and wanted to send samples to our partner in Dublin.
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
Surely the Trusted Trader scheme that the EU committed to is helping you?
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
"@ZacGoldsmith A stale old corporatist who delivered 7 years of autopilot govt & a thumping defeat at the polls... & is still struggling to come to terms with the country’s decision to leave the EU.
John Major’s intervention has zero to do with covid rules (or democracy!)"
Zac "Bollywood" Goldsmith on thumping defeats at the polls. Well, well
Doesn't play the adultery card, though, I wonder why that is
John Major's dalliance with Edwina Currie was terribly amusing but not actually that relevant to any subsequent position he has taken on anything.
John Major's refusal to hold a referendum on Maastricht was a major step on the road to Brexit.
John Major never managed to lock the whole country down and then hold a series of parties however. But that is true of almost all of us.
"@ZacGoldsmith A stale old corporatist who delivered 7 years of autopilot govt & a thumping defeat at the polls... & is still struggling to come to terms with the country’s decision to leave the EU.
John Major’s intervention has zero to do with covid rules (or democracy!)"
At least Zac never got defeated at the polls, right?
Can't have done surely, he's still part of that fine upholder of democracy, the current government.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
Baffling that someone with so little grasp of the law as to how the country is governed spends time on a political website.
Why are you not saying "five and a half years on you just can't bring yourself to admit the countless benefits which brexit has so visibly conferred on every aspect of life in the UK" I wonder?
Falling back on the technically legal position when it differs from the political reality never works. (see also: Boris parties).
When you find yourself saying "technically legal" when you mean "legal" you have already lost.
Now, about those brexit benefits?
Here's the thing. The overriding Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to compromise as part of a large trade body which had political aspirations also. That is, we join North Korea in being more sovereign than, say, France. I imagine 0.4% of the people who voted for Brexit wanted this, they have achieved it, and it is an incontrovertible position. If the country is worse off as a result then that is irrelevant to their view of the world.
Of course the next trade deal that is signed will erode that sovereignty but they are enjoying it while it lasts and I am happy for them.
It is the idiots who voted it for a) economic benefit; b) less immigration; or c) any other reason whatsoever that deserve ire and scorn.
We import products from the EU to sell in the UK. We're also opening up the Irish market and wanted to send samples to our partner in Dublin.
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
Yeah but it is sovereignty. Forget (f**k) business. We are sovereign. That is all that matters and it is a perfectly legitimate desire.
There are millions upon millions, maybe 52% of the country, maybe more, who want an end to all restrictions this afternoon.
If it's a political decision then it is one that the government was elected legitimately to take.
They're certainly entitled to make it, and it may or may not be popular. Indeed, it may or may not be the right thing to do. However, on a matter of public health I should like our government to be motivated by the interest of public health, more than the relationship of the PM to his backbenchers. Spector doesn't think that's the case, and that seems a very legitimate concern.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
Except if it had been a Remain vote and the after the next election a Leave-y parliament was elected, there would have been another referendum. Which is fine, because democracy is a process.
There could have been, because the result of the 2016 referendum would have been implemented. It wouldn't have been likely, though.
Before 2016, I wasn't much of a Leaver. Had the vote gone the other way I would have joined the European Movement and been advocating joining the euro and Schengen, because if we were going to be in, we might as well have been in.
There are several people here (and many in the wider world) who don't seem to grasp one basic fact: in a democracy, if you are going to bother to ask the people what to do, you have to do it. That doesn't stop them changing their mind and undoing it once it's been done - but only after it's been done.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Because one vote only is allowed for some reason.
You can have as many votes as you want, provided only that what the public decides in those votes happens. If it doesn't, holding the votes is pointless and you might as well just report all the results as 99.7% Да.
In 2015 the British public elected a majority Conservative government to a fixed 5-year term. What they voted for did not happen. In 2017 the British public elected a minority Conservative government to a fixed 5-year term. What they voted for did not happen. In 2019 the British public elected a majority Conservative government to a fixed 5-year term. As this thread demonstrates it is almost entirely unlikely that will not happen as that parliament will be dissolved early.
You are saying that a referendum held on an advisory basis in the 2015 parliament overrules the general elections held in 2017 and 2019 - and presumably all the ones that follow. Its nonsense.
There are millions upon millions, maybe 52% of the country, maybe more, who want an end to all restrictions this afternoon.
If it's a political decision then it is one that the government was elected legitimately to take.
They're certainly entitled to make it, and it may or may not be popular. Indeed, it may or may not be the right thing to do. However, on a matter of public health I should like our government to be motivated by the interest of public health, more than the relationship of the PM to his backbenchers. Spector doesn't think that's the case, and that seems a very legitimate concern.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But every GE, and especially ones that are within the five years "invalidates the [previous] vote".
Imagine a Labour manifesto promised to nationalise Tescos and lo the Labour government was elected. But there was an outcry, people defected to the LDs, Greens, Reform (stay with it). A VONC was called and a Cons govt was elected. They decided not to nationalise Tescos.
Democratic or not democratic?
Democratic. It is settled law that manifesto pledges are meaningless (and you should remember why). The only thing decided in a general election is who sits as an MP, not what they do afterwards,
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
Except if it had been a Remain vote and the after the next election a Leave-y parliament was elected, there would have been another referendum. Which is fine, because democracy is a process.
A closer example would have been for a leave-backing government to call a referendum, get a remain vote and then leave anyway.
I'm a bit torn on this, as I do think a referendum can trump a referendum (or even, less clearly, a GE) but I think given the wording and promises around the initial referendum the leave vote had to end in leave and any confirmatory referendum on a leave deal couldn't have remain as an option.
Every political decision now being made is for a political purpose ie the survival of Boris as PM, and the benefits or risks to us of such decisions are of no importance whatsoever.
Until he goes, that is how it will be.
Yes. I think with Johnson it's always been about him first and foremost but this is especially true now. It's gone from Johnson First to Johnson Only. This is a dreadful backdrop for decision making. One of the biggest benefits of democracy over dictatorship is there's a strong natural link between what a nation's population want and what their political leader of the moment wants. In a dictatorship this isn't the case. Eg what's good for Vladimir Putin bears little relation to what's good for the people of Russia. We're in this situation now with Johnson. Thankfully he doesn't have Putin's untrammeled domestic powers but if he did I'd say there's every chance he'd have British forces massing in the Channel and gazing ostentatiously at Calais.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
"the government" being the one elected in 2015.
Then we had an unnecessary general election.
Which elected a different mix of MPs and a government who needed the support of others to do anything.
Radical idea - if implementing the referendum result was important to May's government, and she had a working majority, would it not have been better to get on with it?
You are describing the entire British electorate - who voted in 2017 for something different to what the voted for in 2015 as "a bitter bad loser".
Honestly I can't understand how some people so confidently comment about democracy whilst demonstrating that they have no clue how our democratic system actually works.
The 2017 election return a vast majority of MPs who were committed to implementing the 2016 result (a significant share of which only made such a committment because they couldn't get elected without doing so). Just because that faction then technically had the legal right to junk their manifesto and become obstructive in the hope of overturning the 2016 result does not mean they were democratically and politically right to do so.
You rely on "MPs can do whatever the hell they want, and screw what the public thinks". Technically correct. Politically unsustainable. Totally undemocratic.
So the latest democratic vote is "totally undemocratic". Gotcha.
No parliament binds its successors. Nor is "should the UK leave the European Union" a mandate for anything beyond that. Most of the wailing and screeching against members of that parliament were because the proposed things like a customs union and single market membership which were 100% compliant with the referendum result.
"Should the UK leave the European Union" is just that. The question wasn't "should we trigger Article 50, have some negotiations and then come back with another referendum to decide whether we actually leave or not". So what you call "the latest democtratic vote" would have been fundamentally undemocratic simply by being called.
I see that today is going to be the day that Major's adultery is going to be used as an excuse for not listening to or thinking about any of the points he makes.
Since none us is perfect - or, if you prefer, without sin - we can never criticise anyone else at all, let alone Boris. Which is very convenient for him.
A bit of a bummer in a democracy, mind you. Oh well.
When I become unDictator of the UK I will, of course appoint myself Head of the Supreme Court.
Since attacking the decisions of the Supreme Court is a vile attack on the law & democracy, it will of course be punishable by life without parole.
So all my decisions.....
Any flaws you can see with this plan?
Why appoint yourself when @Cyclefree would do better?
For the rest, I don't care as long as I am Secretary of State for Education with capital powers over all civil servants.
Are retired civil servants safe from your ire? Just asking.
I should mention to @ydoethur that an early policy of my government will be contract with SpaceX to build an indigenous UK space launch and expiration capability. This will be on a strictly COD basis.
- 50% for the delivery of the entire UK parliament to Pluto - 50% for the delivery of the entire DfE to Uranus
There are millions upon millions, maybe 52% of the country, maybe more, who want an end to all restrictions this afternoon.
If it's a political decision then it is one that the government was elected legitimately to take.
They're certainly entitled to make it, and it may or may not be popular. Indeed, it may or may not be the right thing to do. However, on a matter of public health I should like our government to be motivated by the interest of public health, more than the relationship of the PM to his backbenchers. Spector doesn't think that's the case, and that seems a very legitimate concern.
Spector is wedded to his Zoe COVID app model, which was fantastically good prior to vaccination at being a week or so ahead of the official figures. However, since widespread vaccinations, his sample group is massively skewed towards the vaccinated and so he has had to add massive fudge factors to try to model the unvaccinated. The result has been his own numbers are all over the shop, often dominated (normally 2/3rds of the total case number) by unvaccinated, despite in his core dataset hardly having any.
As a result, his estimates are cases are really high and rising. The official figures are they are well down and falling. He might be picking something up, but over the past few months, this hasn't been the case, in the way it was a year ago.
If Scotland votes for independence in the next referendum, and then 2 years later the negotiations are going as badly as most of us predict, and public opinion in Scotland suggests people are changing their minds, then you can be sure the Tories will be loudly proclaiming the democratic right of Scottish voters to change their minds.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Because one vote only is allowed for some reason.
You can have as many votes as you want, provided only that what the public decides in those votes happens. If it doesn't, holding the votes is pointless and you might as well just report all the results as 99.7% Да.
In 2015 the British public elected a majority Conservative government to a fixed 5-year term. What they voted for did not happen. In 2017 the British public elected a minority Conservative government to a fixed 5-year term. What they voted for did not happen. In 2019 the British public elected a majority Conservative government to a fixed 5-year term. As this thread demonstrates it is almost entirely unlikely that will not happen as that parliament will be dissolved early.
You are saying that a referendum held on an advisory basis in the 2015 parliament overrules the general elections held in 2017 and 2019 - and presumably all the ones that follow. Its nonsense.
You are again claiming that the referendum was "advisory". Technically true. Politically and democratically false.
And that makes your assertions about 2015, 2017 and 2019 wrong, wrong and wrong again - if you rely on what is technically true, then technically the people at a general election vote for a local MP not a government. You're really twisting yourself in knots here.
"@ZacGoldsmith A stale old corporatist who delivered 7 years of autopilot govt & a thumping defeat at the polls... & is still struggling to come to terms with the country’s decision to leave the EU.
John Major’s intervention has zero to do with covid rules (or democracy!)"
Zac "Bollywood" Goldsmith on thumping defeats at the polls. Well, well
Doesn't play the adultery card, though, I wonder why that is
John Major's dalliance with Edwina Currie was terribly amusing but not actually that relevant to any subsequent position he has taken on anything.
John Major's refusal to hold a referendum on Maastricht was a major step on the road to Brexit.
John Major never managed to lock the whole country down and then hold a series of parties however. But that is true of almost all of us.
Almost all of us never managed to destroy the tories' reputation for handling the economy via the EMS crisis.
Almost all of us never managed to go down to a defeat so large it was almost two decades before the tories took power again unaided by others.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
There are millions upon millions, maybe 52% of the country, maybe more, who want an end to all restrictions this afternoon.
If it's a political decision then it is one that the government was elected legitimately to take.
They're certainly entitled to make it, and it may or may not be popular. Indeed, it may or may not be the right thing to do. However, on a matter of public health I should like our government to be motivated by the interest of public health, more than the relationship of the PM to his backbenchers. Spector doesn't think that's the case, and that seems a very legitimate concern.
"Spector doesn't think that's the case"
Righty-ho.
I'm happy for scientists to come out and say the government has got it wrong. And for others to come out and say the scientists have got it wrong.
But I don't share their viewpoint. Unless going zero-Covid, which does not look realistic at all for the UK then, in the absence of herd immunity*, when you ditch restrictions you will eventually get increasing cases**. There's nothing much coming down the line that is going to greatly change our immunity if we wait a few more months (a bit more immunity from infections, a bit more from vaccinations, but there's not much more to do there). There's not a very clear rationale for waiting longer, really.
*we may be there or thereabouts already - existing restrictions are pretty minimal, key thing is how much testing and isolation is pulling down R (and neither of those will cease just because they become voluntary)
**ok, so there is the issue of herd immunity overshoot - if you get to herd immunity with 100 people infected then you'll bob along at 100 people infected for a bit before that gradually declines; if you get to herd immunity with 1000000 infected then they'll infect another 1000000 before the numbers start coming down, but we're not at those kind of extremes
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
Baffling that someone with so little grasp of the law as to how the country is governed spends time on a political website.
Why are you not saying "five and a half years on you just can't bring yourself to admit the countless benefits which brexit has so visibly conferred on every aspect of life in the UK" I wonder?
Falling back on the technically legal position when it differs from the political reality never works. (see also: Boris parties).
When you find yourself saying "technically legal" when you mean "legal" you have already lost.
Now, about those brexit benefits?
Here's the thing. The overriding Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to compromise as part of a large trade body which had political aspirations also. That is, we join North Korea in being more sovereign than, say, France. I imagine 0.4% of the people who voted for Brexit wanted this, they have achieved it, and it is an incontrovertible position. If the country is worse off as a result then that is irrelevant to their view of the world.
Of course the next trade deal that is signed will erode that sovereignty but they are enjoying it while it lasts and I am happy for them.
It is the idiots who voted it for a) economic benefit; b) less immigration; or c) any other reason whatsoever that deserve ire and scorn.
We import products from the EU to sell in the UK. We're also opening up the Irish market and wanted to send samples to our partner in Dublin.
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
Surely the Trusted Trader scheme that the EU committed to is helping you?
1. Trusted trader schemes cannot cover every transaction of every product by every trader. Nobody - except mendacious wazzocks - have ever suggested they would. 2. I am talking about tariffs not standards. Trusted trader schemes would cover standards. 3. In our case all tariffs and taxes are aligned - 0%. But the 3rd party status we demanded requires reams of paperwork. The TCA we negotiated and signed requires at our own request reams of paperwork.
Happy to discuss matters of trading rules with anyone who understands them. That isn't you luv.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
David Cameron, addressing the British people, in late 2015
'Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum... You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.'
'So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.'
Now, i know this makes a lot of people on this site deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
They need to deal with it, own it, confess, say sorry, and we all move on
And it has been.
Now about those Brexit promises which were made?
Because I'm guessing - a wild guess here - that those unfulfilled promises, the broken promises and the admission that they don't know what to do now is making some people feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
Not remotely. I agree with the noble ex-PBer @SeanT who wrote in the Spectator in October 2016 that Brexit would be like having a baby. Painful, bloody, unpleasant… and explicitly dismissed the airy Leaver promises:
“Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?”
How right he was. We desperately need him back. A much missed voice of calm sanity and moral probity
And now I must go and eat lagoon crabs. Later
Spot on, Leon. Sean T was not only witty and cultured, he was also highly entertaining.
I think we still miss him. He is fondly remembered, and still mentioned in dispatches.
I heard that SeanT went to Sri Lanka and got crabs, but I can't verify this.
Coming late to 20 years of PB is like first following a old soap. But I have worked a lot of it out now. Leon used to post as SeanT? So a reference to SeanT is a reference to Leon? Pronounced Shawn Tea? But that’s a stupid name, using Leon works much better.
I also like how people who haven’t posted for ages pop back in, just like soaps when they bring old legendary characters back. The evening with JackW was very good as could feel everyone overjoyed to have him in the room - but I didn’t understand at all what Jack was saying, it was like an episode of Clangers with the soup dragon in it.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
It sounds like what you really want is a change of electorate.
The electorate as was voted in 2017 for one heck of a mess and that's what we got. In 2019, however, they realised that they actually wanted to leave the EU and hence voted for that instead.
You (and the others on here) seem to be saying that the 2017 electorate should have been ignored because of a vote the previous year (by that very same electorate).
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
David Cameron, addressing the British people, in late 2015
'Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum... You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.'
'So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.'
Now, i know this makes a lot of people on this site deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
They need to deal with it, own it, confess, say sorry, and we all move on
And it has been.
Now about those Brexit promises which were made?
Because I'm guessing - a wild guess here - that those unfulfilled promises, the broken promises and the admission that they don't know what to do now is making some people feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
Not remotely. I agree with the noble ex-PBer @SeanT who wrote in the Spectator in October 2016 that Brexit would be like having a baby. Painful, bloody, unpleasant… and explicitly dismissed the airy Leaver promises:
“Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?”
How right he was. We desperately need him back. A much missed voice of calm sanity and moral probity
And now I must go and eat lagoon crabs. Later
Spot on, Leon. Sean T was not only witty and cultured, he was also highly entertaining.
I think we still miss him. He is fondly remembered, and still mentioned in dispatches.
I heard that SeanT went to Sri Lanka and got crabs, but I can't verify this.
Coming late to 20 years of PB is like first following a old soap. But I have worked a lot of it out now. Leon used to post as SeanT? So a reference to SeanT is a reference to Leon? Pronounced Shawn Tea? But that’s a stupid name, using Leon works much better.
I also like how people who haven’t posted for ages pop back in, just like soaps when they bring old legendary characters back. The evening with JackW was very good as could feel everyone overjoyed to have him in the room - but I didn’t understand at all what Jack was saying, it was like an episode of Clangers with the soup dragon in it.
You may have also worked out that there were a lot of other aliases between SeanT and Leon
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
"the government" being the one elected in 2015.
Then we had an unnecessary general election.
Which elected a different mix of MPs and a government who needed the support of others to do anything.
Radical idea - if implementing the referendum result was important to May's government, and she had a working majority, would it not have been better to get on with it?
You are describing the entire British electorate - who voted in 2017 for something different to what the voted for in 2015 as "a bitter bad loser".
Honestly I can't understand how some people so confidently comment about democracy whilst demonstrating that they have no clue how our democratic system actually works.
The 2017 election return a vast majority of MPs who were committed to implementing the 2016 result (a significant share of which only made such a committment because they couldn't get elected without doing so). Just because that faction then technically had the legal right to junk their manifesto and become obstructive in the hope of overturning the 2016 result does not mean they were democratically and politically right to do so.
You rely on "MPs can do whatever the hell they want, and screw what the public thinks". Technically correct. Politically unsustainable. Totally undemocratic.
So the latest democratic vote is "totally undemocratic". Gotcha.
No parliament binds its successors. Nor is "should the UK leave the European Union" a mandate for anything beyond that. Most of the wailing and screeching against members of that parliament were because the proposed things like a customs union and single market membership which were 100% compliant with the referendum result.
"Should the UK leave the European Union" is just that. The question wasn't "should we trigger Article 50, have some negotiations and then come back with another referendum to decide whether we actually leave or not". So what you call "the latest democtratic vote" would have been fundamentally undemocratic simply by being called.
Again, the referendum question applied in the 2015 parliament. Then we had a general election. As that successor parliament doesn't have to maintain any of the laws enacted by previous parliaments why does this referendum apply differently? And not just differently, in a superior manner?
There are millions upon millions, maybe 52% of the country, maybe more, who want an end to all restrictions this afternoon.
If it's a political decision then it is one that the government was elected legitimately to take.
They're certainly entitled to make it, and it may or may not be popular. Indeed, it may or may not be the right thing to do. However, on a matter of public health I should like our government to be motivated by the interest of public health, more than the relationship of the PM to his backbenchers. Spector doesn't think that's the case, and that seems a very legitimate concern.
"Spector doesn't think that's the case"
Righty-ho.
I'm happy for scientists to come out and say the government has got it wrong. And for others to come out and say the scientists have got it wrong.
But I don't share their viewpoint. Unless going zero-Covid, which does not look realistic at all for the UK then, in the absence of herd immunity*, when you ditch restrictions you will eventually get increasing cases**. There's nothing much coming down the line that is going to greatly change our immunity if we wait a few more months (a bit more immunity from infections, a bit more from vaccinations, but there's not much more to do there). There's not a very clear rationale for waiting longer, really.
*we may be there or thereabouts already - existing restrictions are pretty minimal, key thing is how much testing and isolation is pulling down R (and neither of those will cease just because they become voluntary)
**ok, so there is the issue of herd immunity overshoot - if you get to herd immunity with 100 people infected then you'll bob along at 100 people infected for a bit before that gradually declines; if you get to herd immunity with 1000000 infected then they'll infect another 1000000 before the numbers start coming down, but we're not at those kind of extremes
A question for those wanting restrictions retained.
1() What restrictions would you like retained? 2) What reduction in R do you estimate each restriction will create?
But every GE, and especially ones that are within the five years "invalidates the [previous] vote".
Imagine a Labour manifesto promised to nationalise Tescos and lo the Labour government was elected. But there was an outcry, people defected to the LDs, Greens, Reform (stay with it). A VONC was called and a Cons govt was elected. They decided not to nationalise Tescos.
Democratic or not democratic?
Manifesto promises are broken all the time. I'd say 'not democratic' and hope that the (almost certain incoming) next GE would put matters right again.
Although it will really depend on how much weight this manifesto promise was given in the hypothetical GE. Front and centre, I'd expect it to be implemented. Buried on page 267 of the manifesto, with not a word mentioned in the campaign, I'd suspect could be gotten away with not implementing.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
David Cameron, addressing the British people, in late 2015
'Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum... You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.'
'So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.'
Now, i know this makes a lot of people on this site deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
They need to deal with it, own it, confess, say sorry, and we all move on
And it has been.
Now about those Brexit promises which were made?
Because I'm guessing - a wild guess here - that those unfulfilled promises, the broken promises and the admission that they don't know what to do now is making some people feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
Not remotely. I agree with the noble ex-PBer @SeanT who wrote in the Spectator in October 2016 that Brexit would be like having a baby. Painful, bloody, unpleasant… and explicitly dismissed the airy Leaver promises:
“Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?”
How right he was. We desperately need him back. A much missed voice of calm sanity and moral probity
And now I must go and eat lagoon crabs. Later
Spot on, Leon. Sean T was not only witty and cultured, he was also highly entertaining.
I think we still miss him. He is fondly remembered, and still mentioned in dispatches.
I heard that SeanT went to Sri Lanka and got crabs, but I can't verify this.
Coming late to 20 years of PB is like first following a old soap. But I have worked a lot of it out now. Leon used to post as SeanT? So a reference to SeanT is a reference to Leon? Pronounced Shawn Tea? But that’s a stupid name, using Leon works much better.
I also like how people who haven’t posted for ages pop back in, just like soaps when they bring old legendary characters back. The evening with JackW was very good as could feel everyone overjoyed to have him in the room - but I didn’t understand at all what Jack was saying, it was like an episode of Clangers with the soup dragon in it.
You may have also worked out that there were a lot of other aliases between SeanT and Leon
I have (I think) a bit of a minority view on Brexit that I can't recall if I've said out loud before. I think, following the 23rd June vote, it should have been purely down to the Executive - ie the UK government - to implement.
"We have voted to Leave the European Union. It is now for you, our Government, supported by our Civil Service, to negotiate the best Exit Deal you can. Go to it."
Making it subject to Parliament was a mistake imo.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
Baffling that someone with so little grasp of the law as to how the country is governed spends time on a political website.
Why are you not saying "five and a half years on you just can't bring yourself to admit the countless benefits which brexit has so visibly conferred on every aspect of life in the UK" I wonder?
Falling back on the technically legal position when it differs from the political reality never works. (see also: Boris parties).
When you find yourself saying "technically legal" when you mean "legal" you have already lost.
Now, about those brexit benefits?
Here's the thing. The overriding Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to compromise as part of a large trade body which had political aspirations also. That is, we join North Korea in being more sovereign than, say, France. I imagine 0.4% of the people who voted for Brexit wanted this, they have achieved it, and it is an incontrovertible position. If the country is worse off as a result then that is irrelevant to their view of the world.
Of course the next trade deal that is signed will erode that sovereignty but they are enjoying it while it lasts and I am happy for them.
It is the idiots who voted it for a) economic benefit; b) less immigration; or c) any other reason whatsoever that deserve ire and scorn.
We import products from the EU to sell in the UK. We're also opening up the Irish market and wanted to send samples to our partner in Dublin.
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
Surely the Trusted Trader scheme that the EU committed to is helping you?
1. Trusted trader schemes cannot cover every transaction of every product by every trader. Nobody - except mendacious wazzocks - have ever suggested they would. 2. I am talking about tariffs not standards. Trusted trader schemes would cover standards. 3. In our case all tariffs and taxes are aligned - 0%. But the 3rd party status we demanded requires reams of paperwork. The TCA we negotiated and signed requires at our own request reams of paperwork.
Happy to discuss matters of trading rules with anyone who understands them. That isn't you luv.
Didn't stop you replying, though, did it?
90%+ of what I'm responsible for exporting goes to the Netherlands, and the Dutch customs authorities don't appear to be making things deliberately difficult unlike certain other countries. That said, there's a certain amount of paperwork which takes a little while getting your head around to start with (but if you were ever exporting outside the EU before, you're used to the concepts anyway) - and once you've done it once it's fairly automatic in future.
There are millions upon millions, maybe 52% of the country, maybe more, who want an end to all restrictions this afternoon.
If it's a political decision then it is one that the government was elected legitimately to take.
They're certainly entitled to make it, and it may or may not be popular. Indeed, it may or may not be the right thing to do. However, on a matter of public health I should like our government to be motivated by the interest of public health, more than the relationship of the PM to his backbenchers. Spector doesn't think that's the case, and that seems a very legitimate concern.
"Spector doesn't think that's the case"
Righty-ho.
I'm happy for scientists to come out and say the government has got it wrong. And for others to come out and say the scientists have got it wrong.
But I don't share their viewpoint. Unless going zero-Covid, which does not look realistic at all for the UK then, in the absence of herd immunity*, when you ditch restrictions you will eventually get increasing cases**. There's nothing much coming down the line that is going to greatly change our immunity if we wait a few more months (a bit more immunity from infections, a bit more from vaccinations, but there's not much more to do there). There's not a very clear rationale for waiting longer, really.
*we may be there or thereabouts already - existing restrictions are pretty minimal, key thing is how much testing and isolation is pulling down R (and neither of those will cease just because they become voluntary)
**ok, so there is the issue of herd immunity overshoot - if you get to herd immunity with 100 people infected then you'll bob along at 100 people infected for a bit before that gradually declines; if you get to herd immunity with 1000000 infected then they'll infect another 1000000 before the numbers start coming down, but we're not at those kind of extremes
I agree. I really don't know what Nick and those who think like him are waiting for. For intelligent comfortably off old blokes, say, without big social lives or families who live alone and get by on ready meals it really is no imposition to wear a mask all the time for everything for ever.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
David Cameron, addressing the British people, in late 2015
'Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum... You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.'
'So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.'
Now, i know this makes a lot of people on this site deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
They need to deal with it, own it, confess, say sorry, and we all move on
And it has been.
Now about those Brexit promises which were made?
Because I'm guessing - a wild guess here - that those unfulfilled promises, the broken promises and the admission that they don't know what to do now is making some people feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
Not remotely. I agree with the noble ex-PBer @SeanT who wrote in the Spectator in October 2016 that Brexit would be like having a baby. Painful, bloody, unpleasant… and explicitly dismissed the airy Leaver promises:
“Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?”
How right he was. We desperately need him back. A much missed voice of calm sanity and moral probity
And now I must go and eat lagoon crabs. Later
Spot on, Leon. Sean T was not only witty and cultured, he was also highly entertaining.
I think we still miss him. He is fondly remembered, and still mentioned in dispatches.
I heard that SeanT went to Sri Lanka and got crabs, but I can't verify this.
Coming late to 20 years of PB is like first following a old soap. But I have worked a lot of it out now. Leon used to post as SeanT? So a reference to SeanT is a reference to Leon? Pronounced Shawn Tea? But that’s a stupid name, using Leon works much better.
I also like how people who haven’t posted for ages pop back in, just like soaps when they bring old legendary characters back. The evening with JackW was very good as could feel everyone overjoyed to have him in the room - but I didn’t understand at all what Jack was saying, it was like an episode of Clangers with the soup dragon in it.
You may have also worked out that there were a lot of other aliases between SeanT and Leon
No. I hadn’t realised that. And I thought I was making progress 😟
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
It sounds like what you really want is a change of electorate.
The electorate as was voted in 2017 for one heck of a mess and that's what we got. In 2019, however, they realised that they actually wanted to leave the EU and hence voted for that instead.
You (and the others on here) seem to be saying that the 2017 electorate should have been ignored because of a vote the previous year (by that very same electorate).
The electorate in 2017, insofar as they voted for anything, voted for 80%+ MPs that were committed to implementing the 2016 result.
We are sovereign. That is all that matters and it is a perfectly legitimate desire.
We were always Sovereign
Now we are poorer and still Sovereign
Yes. But we are more sovereign. I mean that is just the way it is.
Many of our politicians are struggling very badly with the increased accountability of brexit. All sorts of people are being called forward to share the burden when things go wrong. Chiefly scientists (covid) but also police (partygate), foreign governments (immigration), world markets (gas prices), big companies (gas prices).
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
"the government" being the one elected in 2015.
Then we had an unnecessary general election.
Which elected a different mix of MPs and a government who needed the support of others to do anything.
Radical idea - if implementing the referendum result was important to May's government, and she had a working majority, would it not have been better to get on with it?
You are describing the entire British electorate - who voted in 2017 for something different to what the voted for in 2015 as "a bitter bad loser".
Honestly I can't understand how some people so confidently comment about democracy whilst demonstrating that they have no clue how our democratic system actually works.
The 2017 election return a vast majority of MPs who were committed to implementing the 2016 result (a significant share of which only made such a committment because they couldn't get elected without doing so). Just because that faction then technically had the legal right to junk their manifesto and become obstructive in the hope of overturning the 2016 result does not mean they were democratically and politically right to do so.
You rely on "MPs can do whatever the hell they want, and screw what the public thinks". Technically correct. Politically unsustainable. Totally undemocratic.
So the latest democratic vote is "totally undemocratic". Gotcha.
No parliament binds its successors. Nor is "should the UK leave the European Union" a mandate for anything beyond that. Most of the wailing and screeching against members of that parliament were because the proposed things like a customs union and single market membership which were 100% compliant with the referendum result.
"Should the UK leave the European Union" is just that. The question wasn't "should we trigger Article 50, have some negotiations and then come back with another referendum to decide whether we actually leave or not". So what you call "the latest democtratic vote" would have been fundamentally undemocratic simply by being called.
Again, the referendum question applied in the 2015 parliament. Then we had a general election. As that successor parliament doesn't have to maintain any of the laws enacted by previous parliaments why does this referendum apply differently? And not just differently, in a superior manner?
Parliament either is sovereign or it isn't.
Parliament is not the boss of the people. The people are the boss of Parliament.
We are and always were sovereign. But we couldn't while we were in the EU zero-rate VAT on domestic energey supplies. Now we have left the EU we can do that. Being in the EU meant that our government couldn't make an adjustment on its domestic tax rate. Now in the context of we were always sovereign that is a compromise that people didn't want to go on making.
NEW: Four American B-52 long-range bombers are arriving in Britain today.
Iconic jets are headed for RAF Fairford (Gloucs), as part of long-planned Bomber Task Force mission of regular US deployments.
Timing is striking though, amid simmering tensions between West and Russia.
A UK defence source says: "Is this aligned to current tensions? Yes and no."
Ex British intelligence official says if clash grows "hot", from Fairford the B-52s could hit "troop concentrations in S Russia & Belarus, Moscow/St Petersburg, even the naval bases in the White Sea"
In the First Gulf War, American B-52s flew from Fairford to bomb Baghdad.
More details coming shortly on @Telegraph live blog 👇
Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback ! https://twitter.com/lionelbarber/status/1491747869803560966
How pathetic it is that people here in the UK allow their partisan grudges to attack UK Ministers standing up against foreign aggression. Lavrov is an evil man and the Kremlin is laughing at useful idiots in the West pushing their talking points.
Why do we send idiots and clowns to be ridiculed. Surely they could have found someone with a pair who could string two words together. I would have been happy to go over and read him his horoscope.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
David Cameron, addressing the British people, in late 2015
'Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum... You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.'
'So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.'
Now, i know this makes a lot of people on this site deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
They need to deal with it, own it, confess, say sorry, and we all move on
And it has been.
Now about those Brexit promises which were made?
Because I'm guessing - a wild guess here - that those unfulfilled promises, the broken promises and the admission that they don't know what to do now is making some people feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
Not remotely. I agree with the noble ex-PBer @SeanT who wrote in the Spectator in October 2016 that Brexit would be like having a baby. Painful, bloody, unpleasant… and explicitly dismissed the airy Leaver promises:
“Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?”
How right he was. We desperately need him back. A much missed voice of calm sanity and moral probity
And now I must go and eat lagoon crabs. Later
Spot on, Leon. Sean T was not only witty and cultured, he was also highly entertaining.
I think we still miss him. He is fondly remembered, and still mentioned in dispatches.
I heard that SeanT went to Sri Lanka and got crabs, but I can't verify this.
Coming late to 20 years of PB is like first following a old soap. But I have worked a lot of it out now. Leon used to post as SeanT? So a reference to SeanT is a reference to Leon? Pronounced Shawn Tea? But that’s a stupid name, using Leon works much better.
I also like how people who haven’t posted for ages pop back in, just like soaps when they bring old legendary characters back. The evening with JackW was very good as could feel everyone overjoyed to have him in the room - but I didn’t understand at all what Jack was saying, it was like an episode of Clangers with the soup dragon in it.
You may have also worked out that there were a lot of other aliases between SeanT and Leon
No. I hadn’t realised that. And I thought I was making progress 😟
Not to mess with your head but there may even have been aliases after Leon. For sure there definitely WILL be aliases after Leon.
If Scotland votes for independence in the next referendum, and then 2 years later the negotiations are going as badly as most of us predict, and public opinion in Scotland suggests people are changing their minds, then you can be sure the Tories will be loudly proclaiming the democratic right of Scottish voters to change their minds.
Oh but that's different, they'll say, because.
No difference. Despite the desperate plight of the Tories at the moment they are quite consistent: It's a free and democratic country. If 'Rejoin with no referendum' wins the next GE Tories will oppose it but accept the parliamentary process which achieves it.
And it was the Tories who gave Scotland a once in a generation free and fair referendum very recently.
And nothing prevented parliament doing its own thing from 2016 onwards, but they didn't impress us with the process.
West Ham's Michail Antonio has questioned the reaction to the Kurt Zouma cat-kicking incident, saying: "Is it worse than players convicted of racism?".
Question to which the answer is yes.
I agree, cats (animals) have no voice.
He's an utter shithead.
I love cats, even though they are arseholes, but I love them.
My cat is a complete and utter shit, all the time. Still love him, even if he winds me up constantly. I will admit to using the 'encourager'* on him when he decides he didn't really want to go out after all...
*See Total Wipeout for the foam hammer that pushes contestants. I gently use the boot to suggest he IS going outside...
The moment you realise you are not a cat owner but a slave to the cat life becomes easier.
The first cat I owned (technically my then other half's cat) gave me quite the intro to cats.
Even if you had fed him 10 minutes earlier the ginger tosser (as I named him) would demand to eat your food, if you didn't, he would go the litter tray and do a number 2 to make sure you couldn't enjoy your food and yet this would be me and the other half later on (obviously not a dress for me.)
Your mistake was to have the cat in the house, rather than the shed.
For a minute there I thought 30 minutes later it was him using the litter tray to spite the cat
I'm happy for scientists to come out and say the government has got it wrong. And for others to come out and say the scientists have got it wrong.
But I don't share their viewpoint. Unless going zero-Covid, which does not look realistic at all for the UK then, in the absence of herd immunity*, when you ditch restrictions you will eventually get increasing cases**. There's nothing much coming down the line that is going to greatly change our immunity if we wait a few more months (a bit more immunity from infections, a bit more from vaccinations, but there's not much more to do there). There's not a very clear rationale for waiting longer, really.
*we may be there or thereabouts already - existing restrictions are pretty minimal, key thing is how much testing and isolation is pulling down R (and neither of those will cease just because they become voluntary)
**ok, so there is the issue of herd immunity overshoot - if you get to herd immunity with 100 people infected then you'll bob along at 100 people infected for a bit before that gradually declines; if you get to herd immunity with 1000000 infected then they'll infect another 1000000 before the numbers start coming down, but we're not at those kind of extremes
Yes, I am sure you are right. Hospitalisation numbers, and especially the most severe ones, are manageable and falling. We already have fairly high levels of immunity, through jabs and prior infection. That protection is probably waning. We can't stop Omicron without absolutely draconian April 2020-style lockdowns, which would be absurd now we're mostly jabbed; all we can do is slow it down a bit, but what's the point? The only effect would be to mean it flares up again when our protection has waned and therefore catching the thing will be more dangerous.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
Baffling that someone with so little grasp of the law as to how the country is governed spends time on a political website.
Why are you not saying "five and a half years on you just can't bring yourself to admit the countless benefits which brexit has so visibly conferred on every aspect of life in the UK" I wonder?
Falling back on the technically legal position when it differs from the political reality never works. (see also: Boris parties).
When you find yourself saying "technically legal" when you mean "legal" you have already lost.
Now, about those brexit benefits?
Here's the thing. The overriding Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to compromise as part of a large trade body which had political aspirations also. That is, we join North Korea in being more sovereign than, say, France. I imagine 0.4% of the people who voted for Brexit wanted this, they have achieved it, and it is an incontrovertible position. If the country is worse off as a result then that is irrelevant to their view of the world.
Of course the next trade deal that is signed will erode that sovereignty but they are enjoying it while it lasts and I am happy for them.
It is the idiots who voted it for a) economic benefit; b) less immigration; or c) any other reason whatsoever that deserve ire and scorn.
We import products from the EU to sell in the UK. We're also opening up the Irish market and wanted to send samples to our partner in Dublin.
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
Surely the Trusted Trader scheme that the EU committed to is helping you?
1. Trusted trader schemes cannot cover every transaction of every product by every trader. Nobody - except mendacious wazzocks - have ever suggested they would. 2. I am talking about tariffs not standards. Trusted trader schemes would cover standards. 3. In our case all tariffs and taxes are aligned - 0%. But the 3rd party status we demanded requires reams of paperwork. The TCA we negotiated and signed requires at our own request reams of paperwork.
Happy to discuss matters of trading rules with anyone who understands them. That isn't you luv.
Didn't stop you replying, though, did it?
90%+ of what I'm responsible for exporting goes to the Netherlands, and the Dutch customs authorities don't appear to be making things deliberately difficult unlike certain other countries. That said, there's a certain amount of paperwork which takes a little while getting your head around to start with (but if you were ever exporting outside the EU before, you're used to the concepts anyway) - and once you've done it once it's fairly automatic in future.
That makes it even sillier. Why are you making a silly dig at the EU relating to trusted trader schemes when you know that trusted trader schemes have nothing whatsoever to do with tariffs?
BTW it isn't the Irish government making this difficult. It is the Irish customs agent.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
NEW: Four American B-52 long-range bombers are arriving in Britain today.
Iconic jets are headed for RAF Fairford (Gloucs), as part of long-planned Bomber Task Force mission of regular US deployments.
Timing is striking though, amid simmering tensions between West and Russia.
A UK defence source says: "Is this aligned to current tensions? Yes and no."
Ex British intelligence official says if clash grows "hot", from Fairford the B-52s could hit "troop concentrations in S Russia & Belarus, Moscow/St Petersburg, even the naval bases in the White Sea"
In the First Gulf War, American B-52s flew from Fairford to bomb Baghdad.
More details coming shortly on @Telegraph live blog 👇
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
Baffling that someone with so little grasp of the law as to how the country is governed spends time on a political website.
Why are you not saying "five and a half years on you just can't bring yourself to admit the countless benefits which brexit has so visibly conferred on every aspect of life in the UK" I wonder?
Falling back on the technically legal position when it differs from the political reality never works. (see also: Boris parties).
When you find yourself saying "technically legal" when you mean "legal" you have already lost.
Now, about those brexit benefits?
Here's the thing. The overriding Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to compromise as part of a large trade body which had political aspirations also. That is, we join North Korea in being more sovereign than, say, France. I imagine 0.4% of the people who voted for Brexit wanted this, they have achieved it, and it is an incontrovertible position. If the country is worse off as a result then that is irrelevant to their view of the world.
Of course the next trade deal that is signed will erode that sovereignty but they are enjoying it while it lasts and I am happy for them.
It is the idiots who voted it for a) economic benefit; b) less immigration; or c) any other reason whatsoever that deserve ire and scorn.
We import products from the EU to sell in the UK. We're also opening up the Irish market and wanted to send samples to our partner in Dublin.
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
Surely the Trusted Trader scheme that the EU committed to is helping you?
1. Trusted trader schemes cannot cover every transaction of every product by every trader. Nobody - except mendacious wazzocks - have ever suggested they would. 2. I am talking about tariffs not standards. Trusted trader schemes would cover standards. 3. In our case all tariffs and taxes are aligned - 0%. But the 3rd party status we demanded requires reams of paperwork. The TCA we negotiated and signed requires at our own request reams of paperwork.
Happy to discuss matters of trading rules with anyone who understands them. That isn't you luv.
Didn't stop you replying, though, did it?
90%+ of what I'm responsible for exporting goes to the Netherlands, and the Dutch customs authorities don't appear to be making things deliberately difficult unlike certain other countries. That said, there's a certain amount of paperwork which takes a little while getting your head around to start with (but if you were ever exporting outside the EU before, you're used to the concepts anyway) - and once you've done it once it's fairly automatic in future.
That makes it even sillier. Why are you making a silly dig at the EU relating to trusted trader schemes when you know that trusted trader schemes have nothing whatsoever to do with tariffs?
BTW it isn't the Irish government making this difficult. It is the Irish customs agent.
Ah, I see. Our Dutch customs agent is very good, as is our carrier. If they weren't, we'd be looking for another one.
That said, we don't get involved in too much re-exporting as we're primarily a manufacturer. Is there a reason your EU supplier can't send the samples directly to Ireland?
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
NEW: Four American B-52 long-range bombers are arriving in Britain today.
Iconic jets are headed for RAF Fairford (Gloucs), as part of long-planned Bomber Task Force mission of regular US deployments.
Timing is striking though, amid simmering tensions between West and Russia.
A UK defence source says: "Is this aligned to current tensions? Yes and no."
Ex British intelligence official says if clash grows "hot", from Fairford the B-52s could hit "troop concentrations in S Russia & Belarus, Moscow/St Petersburg, even the naval bases in the White Sea"
In the First Gulf War, American B-52s flew from Fairford to bomb Baghdad.
More details coming shortly on @Telegraph live blog 👇
But we couldn't while we were in the EU zero-rate VAT on domestic energey supplies. Now we have left the EU we can do that.
Spain just did it
And we didn't
The EU forbade it. Saying well it was against the rules but we did it anyway is not a model of government I approve of.
Damn just did another Brexit post.
The EU has very strict rules on VAT, and it allows only two bands.
It is, however, perfectly possible to have zero as a band. I assume that this is what the Spaniards have done to enable zero rating of electricity.
As I remember it if it was zero-rated when the agreement came into force (Maastricht, some other agreement, who knows) it can be re-zero-rated. We put VAT on home energy up to 5% prior to whenever it was hence we couldn't lower it. I imagine in Spain it was zero at the time of the agreement and they put it up subsequently.
And I also imagine that the last time I looked at this was five years ago.
But we couldn't while we were in the EU zero-rate VAT on domestic energey supplies. Now we have left the EU we can do that.
Spain just did it
And we didn't
The EU forbade it. Saying well it was against the rules but we did it anyway is not a model of government I approve of.
Damn just did another Brexit post.
The EU has very strict rules on VAT, and it allows only two bands.
It is, however, perfectly possible to have zero as a band. I assume that this is what the Spaniards have done to enable zero rating of electricity.
We also had (and have) zero as a band (zero-rated and VAT exempt being different concepts that are often confused). But my understanding was that items that weren't zero-rated at a certain point in time couldn't later be made zero-rated (I'm unsure if this was specific to a zero-rated band or if items couldn't be moved down bands in general). Presumably something has subsequently changed - or the Spanish government has found an exception - or the Spanish government is ignoring the rules and doing it anyway.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
Baffling that someone with so little grasp of the law as to how the country is governed spends time on a political website.
Why are you not saying "five and a half years on you just can't bring yourself to admit the countless benefits which brexit has so visibly conferred on every aspect of life in the UK" I wonder?
Falling back on the technically legal position when it differs from the political reality never works. (see also: Boris parties).
When you find yourself saying "technically legal" when you mean "legal" you have already lost.
Now, about those brexit benefits?
Here's the thing. The overriding Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to compromise as part of a large trade body which had political aspirations also. That is, we join North Korea in being more sovereign than, say, France. I imagine 0.4% of the people who voted for Brexit wanted this, they have achieved it, and it is an incontrovertible position. If the country is worse off as a result then that is irrelevant to their view of the world.
Of course the next trade deal that is signed will erode that sovereignty but they are enjoying it while it lasts and I am happy for them.
It is the idiots who voted it for a) economic benefit; b) less immigration; or c) any other reason whatsoever that deserve ire and scorn.
We import products from the EU to sell in the UK. We're also opening up the Irish market and wanted to send samples to our partner in Dublin.
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
Surely the Trusted Trader scheme that the EU committed to is helping you?
1. Trusted trader schemes cannot cover every transaction of every product by every trader. Nobody - except mendacious wazzocks - have ever suggested they would. 2. I am talking about tariffs not standards. Trusted trader schemes would cover standards. 3. In our case all tariffs and taxes are aligned - 0%. But the 3rd party status we demanded requires reams of paperwork. The TCA we negotiated and signed requires at our own request reams of paperwork.
Happy to discuss matters of trading rules with anyone who understands them. That isn't you luv.
Didn't stop you replying, though, did it?
90%+ of what I'm responsible for exporting goes to the Netherlands, and the Dutch customs authorities don't appear to be making things deliberately difficult unlike certain other countries. That said, there's a certain amount of paperwork which takes a little while getting your head around to start with (but if you were ever exporting outside the EU before, you're used to the concepts anyway) - and once you've done it once it's fairly automatic in future.
That makes it even sillier. Why are you making a silly dig at the EU relating to trusted trader schemes when you know that trusted trader schemes have nothing whatsoever to do with tariffs?
BTW it isn't the Irish government making this difficult. It is the Irish customs agent.
Ah, I see. Our Dutch customs agent is very good, as is our carrier. If they weren't, we'd be looking for another one.
That said, we don't get involved in too much re-exporting as we're primarily a manufacturer. Is there a reason your EU supplier can't send the samples directly to Ireland?
Because the stock is already here in free circulation. Unless one of your Brexit benefits is to make shipping something 1,750 miles and bypassing the UK completely is better for Britain than sending it 400 miles and having it count as trade here and provide jobs here.
So to go back to your "point" about trusted trader schemes, what does that have to do with tariffs? I'll help you out here - it doesn't but you have to have a pop at free trade as you're a fuck business Boris Brexiteer.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
They would have been carrying eth suitcases in for sure , up to their necks in it.
But we couldn't while we were in the EU zero-rate VAT on domestic energey supplies. Now we have left the EU we can do that.
Spain just did it
And we didn't
The EU forbade it. Saying well it was against the rules but we did it anyway is not a model of government I approve of.
Damn just did another Brexit post.
The EU has very strict rules on VAT, and it allows only two bands.
It is, however, perfectly possible to have zero as a band. I assume that this is what the Spaniards have done to enable zero rating of electricity.
As I remember it if it was zero-rated when the agreement came into force (Maastricht, some other agreement, who knows) it can be re-zero-rated. We put VAT on home energy up to 5% prior to whenever it was hence we couldn't lower it. I imagine in Spain it was zero at the time of the agreement and they put it up subsequently.
And I also imagine that the last time I looked at this was five years ago.
Ah, that would make sense. It would certainly be consistent with the situation as I understood it, I hadn't considered the "move it up and down again" aspect.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
NEW: Four American B-52 long-range bombers are arriving in Britain today.
Iconic jets are headed for RAF Fairford (Gloucs), as part of long-planned Bomber Task Force mission of regular US deployments.
Timing is striking though, amid simmering tensions between West and Russia.
A UK defence source says: "Is this aligned to current tensions? Yes and no."
Ex British intelligence official says if clash grows "hot", from Fairford the B-52s could hit "troop concentrations in S Russia & Belarus, Moscow/St Petersburg, even the naval bases in the White Sea"
In the First Gulf War, American B-52s flew from Fairford to bomb Baghdad.
More details coming shortly on @Telegraph live blog 👇
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Being really serious though, and putting ourselves in position of the police, it’s awkward to treat VIP on Downing Street estate just like anyone else. Admittedly granny was home alone at Christmas as people obeyed Boris law, singletons in pokey bedsits tried to meet up in a park for a few minutes and police came across to them etc. But that’s not a story. Intervening on the Downing Street estate on the people who set the rules would have consequences. You know what I mean?
Firstly, someone surely got on the phone. And decision was made not to act on ground but go through the channels higher up. “What is it John?” “Though there’s supposed to be restrictions, they’re partying here like its 1999, Sir. What should we do?” “Okay. I’ll go upstairs and get an answer back to you.”
Secondly, if you believe in the restrictions, part of your decision to intervene or not is not just a messy political scandal all over the media, but it’s going to make the police job enforcing restrictions become nigh impossible.
I’m not defending the police, or the particular ones probably very high up made who the decision. But I I am defending them a bit to be fair. Do you get what I mean. It’s lazy to mock without considering it from their point of view.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
Baffling that someone with so little grasp of the law as to how the country is governed spends time on a political website.
Why are you not saying "five and a half years on you just can't bring yourself to admit the countless benefits which brexit has so visibly conferred on every aspect of life in the UK" I wonder?
Falling back on the technically legal position when it differs from the political reality never works. (see also: Boris parties).
When you find yourself saying "technically legal" when you mean "legal" you have already lost.
Now, about those brexit benefits?
Here's the thing. The overriding Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to compromise as part of a large trade body which had political aspirations also. That is, we join North Korea in being more sovereign than, say, France. I imagine 0.4% of the people who voted for Brexit wanted this, they have achieved it, and it is an incontrovertible position. If the country is worse off as a result then that is irrelevant to their view of the world.
Of course the next trade deal that is signed will erode that sovereignty but they are enjoying it while it lasts and I am happy for them.
It is the idiots who voted it for a) economic benefit; b) less immigration; or c) any other reason whatsoever that deserve ire and scorn.
We import products from the EU to sell in the UK. We're also opening up the Irish market and wanted to send samples to our partner in Dublin.
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
Surely the Trusted Trader scheme that the EU committed to is helping you?
1. Trusted trader schemes cannot cover every transaction of every product by every trader. Nobody - except mendacious wazzocks - have ever suggested they would. 2. I am talking about tariffs not standards. Trusted trader schemes would cover standards. 3. In our case all tariffs and taxes are aligned - 0%. But the 3rd party status we demanded requires reams of paperwork. The TCA we negotiated and signed requires at our own request reams of paperwork.
Happy to discuss matters of trading rules with anyone who understands them. That isn't you luv.
Didn't stop you replying, though, did it?
90%+ of what I'm responsible for exporting goes to the Netherlands, and the Dutch customs authorities don't appear to be making things deliberately difficult unlike certain other countries. That said, there's a certain amount of paperwork which takes a little while getting your head around to start with (but if you were ever exporting outside the EU before, you're used to the concepts anyway) - and once you've done it once it's fairly automatic in future.
That makes it even sillier. Why are you making a silly dig at the EU relating to trusted trader schemes when you know that trusted trader schemes have nothing whatsoever to do with tariffs?
BTW it isn't the Irish government making this difficult. It is the Irish customs agent.
Ah, I see. Our Dutch customs agent is very good, as is our carrier. If they weren't, we'd be looking for another one.
That said, we don't get involved in too much re-exporting as we're primarily a manufacturer. Is there a reason your EU supplier can't send the samples directly to Ireland?
Because the stock is already here in free circulation. Unless one of your Brexit benefits is to make shipping something 1,750 miles and bypassing the UK completely is better for Britain than sending it 400 miles and having it count as trade here and provide jobs here.
So to go back to your "point" about trusted trader schemes, what does that have to do with tariffs? I'll help you out here - it doesn't but you have to have a pop at free trade as you're a fuck business Boris Brexiteer.
Am I close?
Nope, miles away. You made it clear that your problem is with the customs agent not the Irish government...
You were talking about samples. Assuming this is successful and you expand to the Irish market, does it make sense in the long run to import and re-export, in terms of lead times, costs, environmental impact etc.? I wouldn't want to do that, and I work in non-perishable goods.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
It sounds like what you really want is a change of electorate.
The electorate as was voted in 2017 for one heck of a mess and that's what we got. In 2019, however, they realised that they actually wanted to leave the EU and hence voted for that instead.
You (and the others on here) seem to be saying that the 2017 electorate should have been ignored because of a vote the previous year (by that very same electorate).
The electorate in 2017, insofar as they voted for anything, voted for 80%+ MPs that were committed to implementing the 2016 result.
Shame the current PM stopped that parliament implementing Brexit......
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
It sounds like what you really want is a change of electorate.
The electorate as was voted in 2017 for one heck of a mess and that's what we got. In 2019, however, they realised that they actually wanted to leave the EU and hence voted for that instead.
You (and the others on here) seem to be saying that the 2017 electorate should have been ignored because of a vote the previous year (by that very same electorate).
The electorate in 2017, insofar as they voted for anything, voted for 80%+ MPs that were committed to implementing the 2016 result.
Shame the current PM stopped that parliament implementing Brexit......
The 2017 parliament was notorious for rejecting everything. For most of it the current PM (and the ERG in general) was a much smaller faction of the obstructionists than the Labour party.
Now Moscow seeks to dictate how it’s interlocutors respond:
MOSCOW, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said a collective response from the European Union to Russian security proposals would lead to a breakdown in talks, but insisted Moscow was in favour of diplomacy to ease tensions over Ukraine.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
They would have been carrying eth suitcases in for sure , up to their necks in it.
Ha Ha 😄 you saying do we know it was empty suitcases going back out?
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Being really serious though, and putting ourselves in position of the police, it’s awkward to treat VIP on Downing Street estate just like anyone else. Admittedly granny was home alone at Christmas as people obeyed Boris law, singletons in pokey bedsits tried to meet up in a park for a few minutes and police came across to them etc. But that’s not a story. Intervening on the Downing Street estate on the people who set the rules would have consequences. You know what I mean?
Firstly, someone surely got on the phone. And decision was made not to act on ground but go through the channels higher up. “What is it John?” “Though there’s supposed to be restrictions, they’re partying here like its 1999, Sir. What should we do?” “Okay. I’ll go upstairs and get an answer back to you.”
Secondly, if you believe in the restrictions, part of your decision to intervene or not is not just a messy political scandal all over the media, but it’s going to make the police job enforcing restrictions become nigh impossible.
I’m not defending the police, or the particular ones probably very high up made who the decision. But I I am defending them a bit to be fair. Do you get what I mean. It’s lazy to mock without considering it from their point of view.
And after Plebgate, the police would really not want to see anything.
Oh, I understand.
But if you can't do a difficult job, then you should resign from it and find someone who can. If you stay in the post but don't do the job, then you will be mocked by those who know.
Bit like the police chief who locked himself in his car during the attack on Westminster that left one of his police officers dead. His excuse - he hadn't got his stab vest on.
The same officer was notorious for disciplining officers in police stations for not wearing their full body armour and kit in the police station.
The same officer was upset when populace officers refused to clap and cheer at his retirement party in the office. I wonder if booze was being served there......
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Being really serious though, and putting ourselves in position of the police, it’s awkward to treat VIP on Downing Street estate just like anyone else. Admittedly granny was home alone at Christmas as people obeyed Boris law, singletons in pokey bedsits tried to meet up in a park for a few minutes and police came across to them etc. But that’s not a story. Intervening on the Downing Street estate on the people who set the rules would have consequences. You know what I mean?
Firstly, someone surely got on the phone. And decision was made not to act on ground but go through the channels higher up. “What is it John?” “Though there’s supposed to be restrictions, they’re partying here like its 1999, Sir. What should we do?” “Okay. I’ll go upstairs and get an answer back to you.”
Secondly, if you believe in the restrictions, part of your decision to intervene or not is not just a messy political scandal all over the media, but it’s going to make the police job enforcing restrictions become nigh impossible.
I’m not defending the police, or the particular ones probably very high up made who the decision. But I I am defending them a bit to be fair. Do you get what I mean. It’s lazy to mock without considering it from their point of view.
You won't last long on this Site with common sense like that, Moon.
Of course the Police would have taken account of who they were policing and what the consequence would likely be. They do that all the time, and in our own ways I expect we all do in our everyday lives. You can only fight so many battles. Makes sense to pick the ones that you might win and not burn up resources on highly problematic innterventions.
Now that it's all out in the open however there's no reason for the police to hold back. They will be damned whether they do or don't so may as well just get on with it promptly.
Scotland's "impartial" Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Professor Sir Gregor Smith has been accused of breaking the civil service code after retweeting an attack from the SNP on the UK government.
The CMO retweeted Humza Yousaf's comments on Boris Johnson's decision to get rid of all Covid restrictions in England at the end of the month.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
This of course is the crux of the issue. Does a referendum "outrank" a GE. No constitutional expert I, but my feeling and only my feeling is no. It is the same electorate voting on different things. What if 300 years ago there was a referendum on slavery and the result was conclusively in favour of legalising it. Would any parliament be able to rescind that instruction or would it have to be subject to another referendum. If the latter, then presumably the second referendum would be perfectly democratic.
No idea what or if there even is a formal precedence for referendum vs GE.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
There's a universe 'over there', just behind the looking glass:
David Cameron: 24th June 2016: "The British people have voted 52% to 48% to remain in the European Union......" *long pause* ".... however, despite voting and campaigning for Remain as well, I'm reminded the vote was only advisory.... I triggered Article 50, as I'm allowed to do, twenty minutes ago. Fuck you all! We leave the EU in two years time." *Slings back inside No. 10 with Samantha looking on dumbfounded. Slams door behind him*
Never an option.
It was clear before the referendum that there were precisely three options:
(1) We vote to Remain and Remain (2) We vote to Leave and Leave (3) We vote to Leave but Remain.
Some people who favoured option 1 (like Major, Grayling and Scott) preferred option 3 to option 2. They are not democrats.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
"you got it wrong, vote again" is how europhiles ended up losing the referendum in the first place.
And what is so advisory about "the government will implement what you decide"?
You're just a bitter bad loser - five and a half years on you just can't get over the fact that you lost.
Baffling that someone with so little grasp of the law as to how the country is governed spends time on a political website.
Why are you not saying "five and a half years on you just can't bring yourself to admit the countless benefits which brexit has so visibly conferred on every aspect of life in the UK" I wonder?
Falling back on the technically legal position when it differs from the political reality never works. (see also: Boris parties).
When you find yourself saying "technically legal" when you mean "legal" you have already lost.
Now, about those brexit benefits?
Here's the thing. The overriding Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to compromise as part of a large trade body which had political aspirations also. That is, we join North Korea in being more sovereign than, say, France. I imagine 0.4% of the people who voted for Brexit wanted this, they have achieved it, and it is an incontrovertible position. If the country is worse off as a result then that is irrelevant to their view of the world.
Of course the next trade deal that is signed will erode that sovereignty but they are enjoying it while it lasts and I am happy for them.
It is the idiots who voted it for a) economic benefit; b) less immigration; or c) any other reason whatsoever that deserve ire and scorn.
We import products from the EU to sell in the UK. We're also opening up the Irish market and wanted to send samples to our partner in Dublin.
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
Surely the Trusted Trader scheme that the EU committed to is helping you?
1. Trusted trader schemes cannot cover every transaction of every product by every trader. Nobody - except mendacious wazzocks - have ever suggested they would. 2. I am talking about tariffs not standards. Trusted trader schemes would cover standards. 3. In our case all tariffs and taxes are aligned - 0%. But the 3rd party status we demanded requires reams of paperwork. The TCA we negotiated and signed requires at our own request reams of paperwork.
Happy to discuss matters of trading rules with anyone who understands them. That isn't you luv.
Didn't stop you replying, though, did it?
90%+ of what I'm responsible for exporting goes to the Netherlands, and the Dutch customs authorities don't appear to be making things deliberately difficult unlike certain other countries. That said, there's a certain amount of paperwork which takes a little while getting your head around to start with (but if you were ever exporting outside the EU before, you're used to the concepts anyway) - and once you've done it once it's fairly automatic in future.
That makes it even sillier. Why are you making a silly dig at the EU relating to trusted trader schemes when you know that trusted trader schemes have nothing whatsoever to do with tariffs?
BTW it isn't the Irish government making this difficult. It is the Irish customs agent.
Ah, I see. Our Dutch customs agent is very good, as is our carrier. If they weren't, we'd be looking for another one.
That said, we don't get involved in too much re-exporting as we're primarily a manufacturer. Is there a reason your EU supplier can't send the samples directly to Ireland?
Because the stock is already here in free circulation. Unless one of your Brexit benefits is to make shipping something 1,750 miles and bypassing the UK completely is better for Britain than sending it 400 miles and having it count as trade here and provide jobs here.
So to go back to your "point" about trusted trader schemes, what does that have to do with tariffs? I'll help you out here - it doesn't but you have to have a pop at free trade as you're a fuck business Boris Brexiteer.
Am I close?
Nope, miles away. You made it clear that your problem is with the customs agent not the Irish government...
You were talking about samples. Assuming this is successful and you expand to the Irish market, does it make sense in the long run to import and re-export, in terms of lead times, costs, environmental impact etc.? I wouldn't want to do that, and I work in non-perishable goods.
Ireland is - was - a small % of the UK & I market. Literally everything pulled through the UK. In terms of "lead times, costs and environmental impact" via the UK is the best option. Dublin ordering from the UK will get quicker service when its a 400 mile trip as opposed to 1,750 miles. Cheaper to ship the short hop across the Irish sea and the logistics industry was very efficient at it making it cost efficient and a nice revenue line for UK PLC. And environment? Again the shorter the trip the less emissions.
From a UK perspective how does the abolition of the UK as the NW European logistics hub benefit us? These boats bypassing us to link France to Ireland are slow and expensive, and every pallet on every truck is one that used to generate revenue for the economy and taxes for the exchequer that now go somewhere else.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Being really serious though, and putting ourselves in position of the police, it’s awkward to treat VIP on Downing Street estate just like anyone else. Admittedly granny was home alone at Christmas as people obeyed Boris law, singletons in pokey bedsits tried to meet up in a park for a few minutes and police came across to them etc. But that’s not a story. Intervening on the Downing Street estate on the people who set the rules would have consequences. You know what I mean?
Firstly, someone surely got on the phone. And decision was made not to act on ground but go through the channels higher up. “What is it John?” “Though there’s supposed to be restrictions, they’re partying here like its 1999, Sir. What should we do?” “Okay. I’ll go upstairs and get an answer back to you.”
Secondly, if you believe in the restrictions, part of your decision to intervene or not is not just a messy political scandal all over the media, but it’s going to make the police job enforcing restrictions become nigh impossible.
I’m not defending the police, or the particular ones probably very high up made who the decision. But I I am defending them a bit to be fair. Do you get what I mean. It’s lazy to mock without considering it from their point of view.
You won't last long on this Site with common sense like that, Moon.
Of course the Police would have taken account of who they were policing and what the consequence would likely be. They do that all the time, and in our own ways I expect we all do in our everyday lives. You can only fight so many battles. Makes sense to pick the ones that you might win and not burn up resources on highly problematic innterventions.
Now that it's all out in the open however there's no reason for the police to hold back. They will be damned whether they do or don't so may as well just get on with it promptly.
Delay is now likely to perceived as complicit.
I once worked with the most honest man I have ever met. He told the exact truth on every occasion.
On one occasion, a manger started screaming at a subordinate in a meeting. At one point the manager started raving "Am I over reacting? AM I?????"
My friend replied - "Yes"
"WHAAAAAT?????"
"Yes, you are over reacting"
We were working a consultants and the manager was working for the client. My friend was sent back to our office that day.
He's a Russian, incidentally - I've met a few in the same vein, all Russian, though perhaps not as hard core as that. Seems to be a sub-culture in Russia of not bravery.... just total honesty, without interest in the cost.
Comments
I've said in the past that I don't see any reason to continue with any restrictions; but for a long time I felt like a lone voice at work; now I feel like I'm in the majority.
It was clear before the referendum that there were precisely three options:
(1) We vote to Remain and Remain
(2) We vote to Leave and Leave
(3) We vote to Leave but Remain.
Some people who favoured option 1 (like Major, Grayling and Scott) preferred option 3 to option 2. They are not democrats.
It’s more than just a Bobby stood outside a door guarding that estate from terror attack. The police have known all along what became a political scandal when hit the media many months later. And to be realistic, what they knew was passed right up the chain, not kept at ground level, wasn’t it?
Dick is in a tight spot, I don’t think Khan and Patel should force her out until this gets untangled. In my opinion, or it would feel like the commissioner is being stitched up in my view.
Sadiq Khan should be asked when he first knew of these parties I think. How long did he sit on the knowledge?
We are all getting exposed to COVID and most of us are going to get it at some point.
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
"You don't really have that sense now about a govt that seems to be just ricocheting around with a🛒 PM"
https://twitter.com/REWearmouth/status/1491779074640986113
Products are imported on a commodity code that is liable for 0% tariff payments. Food that has 0% VAT in UK and Ireland. We imported it from the EU to the UK and now want to export to the EU. Following me so far?
Here is the problem. Secondary export means you have used up your rules of origin tariff benefit and have to revert to the 3rd country EU tariffs. Big trauma. Lots of emails between our Irish partner and their customs agent and our customs agent about the costs and the paperwork to manage the costs.
Except there are no costs. Because the EU 3rd country tariff on this commodity code is 0%. So no tariff payable on import to the EU. No tariff payable on re-export to the EU. No entry VAT payable on import to the UK. No import VAT payable on import to Ireland. But the cost of the admin and the paperwork - if we can get the respective customs agents to accept there is no fucking import payment because its all 0% - is crushing.
Far far easier not to do this business at all. And THAT is the Brexit benefit that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mrs Elphicke et al can crow about. After centuries of being a massively successful and (literally) all-conquering trading nation we have made trade not worth the effort.
General Elections elect the parliament for UP TO five years. This isn't the US. There aren't fixed terms. General elections could be held yearly if wanted. Or twice in a year if you're Harold Wilson.
Referendums, likewise, are just advisory. But the huge danger here is that if these 'advisory' referendums come out with a result you don't like, so you seek to have another.
A second referendum with Remain OFF the ballot paper might've been acceptable, but not with.
The counterpoints:
I'm sure you're happy if:
Wilson had left the EEC in 1976, despite the vote in 1975.
Cameron had adopted PR, despite the vote in 2011 (And despite PR not even being on the ballot paper).
Deep down, if referendums are only advisory, why bother having them? If you're not going to follow the advice, its just a waste of time and money.
It sets dangerous precidents for future referendums. It will encourage boycots of General Elections and other Referendums. It will disengage people from politics generally.
You can have any colour car you want, as long as its black.
If your argument relies on a mischaracterisation of the reasons for the 2017 and 2019 general elections, I don't think I can help you either.
(*) Yeah, I know, Sinn Fein.
Imagine a Labour manifesto promised to nationalise Tescos and lo the Labour government was elected. But there was an outcry, people defected to the LDs, Greens, Reform (stay with it). A VONC was called and a Cons govt was elected. They decided not to nationalise Tescos.
Democratic or not democratic?
No parliament binds its successors. Nor is "should the UK leave the European Union" a mandate for anything beyond that. Most of the wailing and screeching against members of that parliament were because the proposed things like a customs union and single market membership which were 100% compliant with the referendum result.
John Major's refusal to hold a referendum on Maastricht was a major step on the road to Brexit.
John Major never managed to lock the whole country down and then hold a series of parties however. But that is true of almost all of us.
Before 2016, I wasn't much of a Leaver. Had the vote gone the other way I would have joined the European Movement and been advocating joining the euro and Schengen, because if we were going to be in, we might as well have been in.
There are several people here (and many in the wider world) who don't seem to grasp one basic fact: in a democracy, if you are going to bother to ask the people what to do, you have to do it. That doesn't stop them changing their mind and undoing it once it's been done - but only after it's been done.
Now we are poorer and still Sovereign
In 2017 the British public elected a minority Conservative government to a fixed 5-year term. What they voted for did not happen.
In 2019 the British public elected a majority Conservative government to a fixed 5-year term. As this thread demonstrates it is almost entirely unlikely that will not happen as that parliament will be dissolved early.
You are saying that a referendum held on an advisory basis in the 2015 parliament overrules the general elections held in 2017 and 2019 - and presumably all the ones that follow. Its nonsense.
https://www.whittard.co.uk does a reasonable range of good quality, and if you order in moderate bulk, they deliver free of charge in the UK.
Righty-ho.
I'm a bit torn on this, as I do think a referendum can trump a referendum (or even, less clearly, a GE) but I think given the wording and promises around the initial referendum the leave vote had to end in leave and any confirmatory referendum on a leave deal couldn't have remain as an option.
- 50% for the delivery of the entire UK parliament to Pluto
- 50% for the delivery of the entire DfE to Uranus
If he still wants the job....
As a result, his estimates are cases are really high and rising. The official figures are they are well down and falling. He might be picking something up, but over the past few months, this hasn't been the case, in the way it was a year ago.
Oh but that's different, they'll say, because.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
- Fraud with an international aspect
- Burglary
- Rape of minors on an industrial scale
- Illegal parties in government offices
- Lots more
- ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
And that makes your assertions about 2015, 2017 and 2019 wrong, wrong and wrong again - if you rely on what is technically true, then technically the people at a general election vote for a local MP not a government. You're really twisting yourself in knots here.
Almost all of us never managed to go down to a defeat so large it was almost two decades before the tories took power again unaided by others.
But I don't share their viewpoint. Unless going zero-Covid, which does not look realistic at all for the UK then, in the absence of herd immunity*, when you ditch restrictions you will eventually get increasing cases**. There's nothing much coming down the line that is going to greatly change our immunity if we wait a few more months (a bit more immunity from infections, a bit more from vaccinations, but there's not much more to do there). There's not a very clear rationale for waiting longer, really.
*we may be there or thereabouts already - existing restrictions are pretty minimal, key thing is how much testing and isolation is pulling down R (and neither of those will cease just because they become voluntary)
**ok, so there is the issue of herd immunity overshoot - if you get to herd immunity with 100 people infected then you'll bob along at 100 people infected for a bit before that gradually declines; if you get to herd immunity with 1000000 infected then they'll infect another 1000000 before the numbers start coming down, but we're not at those kind of extremes
2. I am talking about tariffs not standards. Trusted trader schemes would cover standards.
3. In our case all tariffs and taxes are aligned - 0%. But the 3rd party status we demanded requires reams of paperwork. The TCA we negotiated and signed requires at our own request reams of paperwork.
Happy to discuss matters of trading rules with anyone who understands them. That isn't you luv.
I also like how people who haven’t posted for ages pop back in, just like soaps when they bring old legendary characters back. The evening with JackW was very good as could feel everyone overjoyed to have him in the room - but I didn’t understand at all what Jack was saying, it was like an episode of Clangers with the soup dragon in it.
I mean that is just the way it is.
The electorate as was voted in 2017 for one heck of a mess and that's what we got. In 2019, however, they realised that they actually wanted to leave the EU and hence voted for that instead.
You (and the others on here) seem to be saying that the 2017 electorate should have been ignored because of a vote the previous year (by that very same electorate).
Parliament either is sovereign or it isn't.
1() What restrictions would you like retained?
2) What reduction in R do you estimate each restriction will create?
I'd say 'not democratic' and hope that the (almost certain incoming) next GE would put matters right again.
Although it will really depend on how much weight this manifesto promise was given in the hypothetical GE. Front and centre, I'd expect it to be implemented.
Buried on page 267 of the manifesto, with not a word mentioned in the campaign, I'd suspect could be gotten away with not implementing.
it's a bit like
"We have voted to Leave the European Union. It is now for you, our Government, supported by our Civil Service, to negotiate the best Exit Deal you can. Go to it."
Making it subject to Parliament was a mistake imo.
90%+ of what I'm responsible for exporting goes to the Netherlands, and the Dutch customs authorities don't appear to be making things deliberately difficult unlike certain other countries. That said, there's a certain amount of paperwork which takes a little while getting your head around to start with (but if you were ever exporting outside the EU before, you're used to the concepts anyway) - and once you've done it once it's fairly automatic in future.
For others not so much.
Iconic jets are headed for RAF Fairford (Gloucs), as part of long-planned Bomber Task Force mission of regular US deployments.
Timing is striking though, amid simmering tensions between West and Russia.
A UK defence source says: "Is this aligned to current tensions? Yes and no."
Ex British intelligence official says if clash grows "hot", from Fairford the B-52s could hit "troop concentrations in S Russia & Belarus, Moscow/St Petersburg, even the naval bases in the White Sea"
In the First Gulf War, American B-52s flew from Fairford to bomb Baghdad.
More details coming shortly on @Telegraph live blog 👇
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/02/10/russia-ukraine-crisis-latest-news-boris-johnson-invasion-nato/
1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not.
2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
And we didn't
No more on historical and perhaps future Brexit from me.
And it was the Tories who gave Scotland a once in a generation free and fair referendum very recently.
And nothing prevented parliament doing its own thing from 2016 onwards, but they didn't impress us with the process.
BTW it isn't the Irish government making this difficult. It is the Irish customs agent.
Damn just did another Brexit post.
https://twitter.com/lionelbarber/status/1491747869803560966
@lionelbarber
Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
That said, we don't get involved in too much re-exporting as we're primarily a manufacturer. Is there a reason your EU supplier can't send the samples directly to Ireland?
It is, however, perfectly possible to have zero as a band. I assume that this is what the Spaniards have done to enable zero rating of electricity.
And I also imagine that the last time I looked at this was five years ago.
So to go back to your "point" about trusted trader schemes, what does that have to do with tariffs? I'll help you out here - it doesn't but you have to have a pop at free trade as you're a fuck business Boris Brexiteer.
Am I close?
that is all
Firstly, someone surely got on the phone. And decision was made not to act on ground but go through the channels higher up.
“What is it John?”
“Though there’s supposed to be restrictions, they’re partying here like its 1999, Sir. What should we do?”
“Okay. I’ll go upstairs and get an answer back to you.”
Secondly, if you believe in the restrictions, part of your decision to intervene or not is not just a messy political scandal all over the media, but it’s going to make the police job enforcing restrictions become nigh impossible.
I’m not defending the police, or the particular ones probably very high up made who the decision. But I I am defending them a bit to be fair. Do you get what I mean. It’s lazy to mock without considering it from their point of view.
You were talking about samples. Assuming this is successful and you expand to the Irish market, does it make sense in the long run to import and re-export, in terms of lead times, costs, environmental impact etc.? I wouldn't want to do that, and I work in non-perishable goods.
MOSCOW, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said a collective response from the European Union to Russian security proposals would lead to a breakdown in talks, but insisted Moscow was in favour of diplomacy to ease tensions over Ukraine.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-security-talks-will-fail-if-eu-gives-collective-response-proposals-2022-02-10
Oh, I understand.
But if you can't do a difficult job, then you should resign from it and find someone who can. If you stay in the post but don't do the job, then you will be mocked by those who know.
Bit like the police chief who locked himself in his car during the attack on Westminster that left one of his police officers dead. His excuse - he hadn't got his stab vest on.
The same officer was notorious for disciplining officers in police stations for not wearing their full body armour and kit in the police station.
The same officer was upset when populace officers refused to clap and cheer at his retirement party in the office. I wonder if booze was being served there......
Of course the Police would have taken account of who they were policing and what the consequence would likely be. They do that all the time, and in our own ways I expect we all do in our everyday lives. You can only fight so many battles. Makes sense to pick the ones that you might win and not burn up resources on highly problematic innterventions.
Now that it's all out in the open however there's no reason for the police to hold back. They will be damned whether they do or don't so may as well just get on with it promptly.
Delay is now likely to perceived as complicit.
The CMO retweeted Humza Yousaf's comments on Boris Johnson's decision to get rid of all Covid restrictions in England at the end of the month.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scotlands-cmo-gregor-smith-accused-26191456
No idea what or if there even is a formal precedence for referendum vs GE.
He had committed to honouring the result.
From a UK perspective how does the abolition of the UK as the NW European logistics hub benefit us? These boats bypassing us to link France to Ireland are slow and expensive, and every pallet on every truck is one that used to generate revenue for the economy and taxes for the exchequer that now go somewhere else.
On one occasion, a manger started screaming at a subordinate in a meeting. At one point the manager started raving "Am I over reacting? AM I?????"
My friend replied - "Yes"
"WHAAAAAT?????"
"Yes, you are over reacting"
We were working a consultants and the manager was working for the client. My friend was sent back to our office that day.
He's a Russian, incidentally - I've met a few in the same vein, all Russian, though perhaps not as hard core as that. Seems to be a sub-culture in Russia of not bravery.... just total honesty, without interest in the cost.