In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
The paywall blocks me but I notice in the "most popular" sidebar, number 2 is a story by that plagiarist Sean Thomas who copied it almost word-for-word from the Flintknappers Gazette.
As I mentioned yesterday teatime, I went to watch a joint exercise with Llandudno lifeboats and the coastguard helicopter in Llandudno Bay as they simulated transferring casualties to the helicopter and between the lifeboats. It was fascinating as the inshore lifeboat crew communicated with the helicopter and made sure every protocol was in place before the inshore moved under the downdraft of the helicopter and backed away immediately after the transfer for safety from the downdraft.
It is amazing to think these RNLI crew members are volunteers dedicated their spare time to saving lives at sea while putting themselves in the line of danger and I know I have an interest as my son was part of the crew on the all-weather boat in the exercise, but we are very proud of him and all his colleagues
Turning to Starmer and ‘beergate’. I do not think he had any choice but offer to resign if he receives a FPN but of course he has opened himself to criticism that as a former head of the CPS he is putting Durham Police under unfair pressure. He maintains that he continued work post the curry and beer and has what’s app and other social media confirmation but frankly I do not see the difference between Boris attending a birthday party for 20 minutes or so in between working himself.
I would venture to suggest the problem is that a quiz took place earlier and that attendees allege excessive drinking took place and they say they were not working after 10.00pm
Durham Police must investigate this as the MET have with no favours and if they conclude a breach of covid rules took place then in fairness in law, FPN’s should be issued to all attendees. However, if they follow the ‘Cummings’ decision, then the pressure on Starmer will be immense to quit, not least because of his own demands on Cummings, but to try to stay in office on a technical point would not be acceptable to many of the public
The only hope for Starmer is Durham Police confirm the whole event complied with the covid regulations at the time, and of course social distancing was integral to that and mention of that is in labour’s own leaked memo, when it is clear from the video a group were standing up conversing and eating without social distancing and reminiscent of the Downing Street Garden event but at least that was outside
How this plays out time will tell and I want Boris out of office anyway and the sooner the better
Yes re RNLI. You compare Durham with the Downing Street garden event but iirc the Met have already cleared Boris (and the others) of that one. If you are right, Starmer will be cleared too.
The birthday cake ambush is different because it occurred between meetings and included family and friends, not just co-workers. If it turns out Mrs Starmer popped up to pour the drinks in Durham, that would be embarrassing.
The salient difference is Durham was indoors and against even labours own leaked memo
It will be interesting how those pictures of a group standing up eating and drinking ignoring social distancing is explained
- “Is the FT right about Beergate giving Starmer a boost?”
Yesterday’s Redfield & Wilton poll suggests that the FT might be wrong. In an otherwise good finding for Labour (headline VI 39%), there is a worrying detail: an appalling drop in motivation among 2019 Labour voters.
Certain to Vote (5/5) - by 2019 GE vote
SNP 65% Con 62% LD 57% Lab 46% DNV 12%
That is a big reversal in voter motivation for Labour: they are usually in a good 2nd place in these types of questions, behind the SNP.
(Redfield & Wilton Strategies; 8 May; 2,000)
(On the other hand, R&W failed to find a single respondent saying they were planning on voting SLD. Very odd, considering that Alex Cole-Hamilton’s team did very well on Thursday. Subsamples, subsamples…)
The trouble with Starmer's high-risk strategy is that he is not denying that curry was washed down with beer, merely that if you (and the Durham police) squint hard enough, this was within the letter of the law. The public might be judging against the spirit of the guidelines.
On the drop in motivation, the LibDems and Greens had a better night than Labour. This should worry Starmer because it had been predicted that Starmer's determinedly non-committal centrism risked driving voters from red to yellow and green, which does seem to be what happened on Thursday.
In terms of Scotland, the parties performed thus:
Greens excellent Lib Dems excellent SNP well Labour well Conservatives poorly
That just ain’t good enough for Sarwar and Starmer. At this stage in the electoral cycle they ought to be utterly thrashing both the SNP and the Tories. I can understand that their activists and voters are disenchanted. And that the Greens and Lib Dems are doing so well must really piss them off.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Not for those of us who don't want Boris as PM going into the next election.... 😉
Fair point. That's also the one potential downside for Labour - that it'll increase the pressure for Johnson to go thus losing the person who has become their best electoral asset.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Corbyn ultras were also enjoying the spectacle of Starmer's difficulties, as exemplified by Dianne Abbott's haste to jump on the bandwagon. Now they'll also be feeling sick, and facing the prospect of: - Starmer actually emerging strengthened in the eyes of both the wider electorate and within the LP - or going but with Rayner also out of the equation and the humiliation of some obscure far left candidate losing another Labour leadership election even more badly than Long-Bailey did.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
But that is my point. You cannot have the law being applied inconsistently or what is lawful being determined by whether someone chooses to accept an FPN because (a) they don't realise it was given to them wrongly (b) they can't afford to challenge it or (c) they just want to get on with it.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Mmmm, why didn't Starmer just say "I will resign if I am found guilty of breaking the rules, regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not?"
That is what a truly principled person would do.
There is no such thing as the Police finding someone guilty.
The Police can say that the person MIGHT be guilty but the matter does not warrant further action (as they did with Cummings - they said the Barnard Castle trip MAY have been a breach, but the fact he didn't breach social distancing meant it was trivial in their view even if it was a breach). But it would only ever be a "maybe".
They can also issue an FPN, which is a stronger statement that they consider the evidence is there to give them a very good chance of conviction. The recipient then has the choice to spend quite a lot of money going to court and getting a criminal record (which an FPN doesn't give).
In neither case do the Police find the person "guilty". Only the courts can do that. But the latter is a FAR stronger statement - the former would never be more than a "perhaps".
Starmer's whole argument is that he is confident he didn't break the rules. In which case, if the Police says he might (I'll use your words) be guilty but refuse to issue a FPN, it still raises questions over his behaviour. Given he is doing this whole "man of principle" thing, a principled person would say "there is a question over my behaviour, I realise this is not in accordance with the standards I set myself and therefore I resign". He is dancing on a pinhead, trying to wriggle himself out of a situation by clinging to meanings.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
I hesitate ( a bit) to argue with, or even question, a distinguished lawyer, but wasn't there a difference in that in the 'cake incident' other people, who could not be said to be part of the work team, stopped to participate in the eating, and perchance drinking? Whereas its seems unlikely that the messenger from the curry house was more thanked, and perchance, tipped.
That may be the case. But then you'd fine the people who were not there for a reasonably necessary work meeting. We don't really know the facts, that's the trouble.
I take the point that FPNs are normally for minor stuff. But now that they have been elevated into the fulcrum on which senior politicians' careers depends, it would be nice if we could get some consistency.
I've said it before - in numerous thread headers and below the line - that the way these laws were passed, with little or no scrutiny, at a moment's notice with confusing guidelines, with the police making stuff up and inconsistent and possibly unlawful enforcement has been an utter disgrace.
People dislike the substance of these laws and I can see why. But the process of law-making and transparency about how laws are interpreted and enforced also matter - for good reason - as we are seeing now.
Not that anyone in politics is making this point, as far as I can see. And so yet another important set of lessons will go unlearnt.
There a hundred better countries in which to live than Britain.
And I intend to do so.
Care to name them?
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
The Nordics and the Netherlands are richer and have a better quality of life than we do. Ireland too. Among the larger European countries Germany certainly does too. I'd say France does too, certainly better work life balance and nicer weather too although the French don't seem very happy with it. Italy is messed up but the food and weather are a lot better. Switzerland has a lot going for it, as does Canada and New Zealand. I'm probably too invested here to move now, and there is still a lot I love about it despite the Tories' best efforts to ruin the place, but the idea that this is objectively the best country in the world to live in is laughable.
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about ranking countries, which is subjective, but that's not remotely close to a hundred countries, so do you care to keep going or agree that "a hundred countries" better than the UK is ridiculous hyperbolic nonsense?
The UK is up there as one of the best, most developed countries to live in on almost any rational metric. As are most other west European nations, the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and Japan depending upon what you prefer.
All have their strengths and foibles, some more than others, but to suggest there's a hundred nations better than any of them is just absurd nonsense.
Yes I wouldn't say 100. Maybe 10-20? The UN's Human Development Index ranks the UK at #13 which seems about right although their precise ranking wouldn't be exactly the same as mine.
Personally - I think it's difficult to live in a country where you don't speak the language/can't communicate comfortably with most people. Japan is I am sure lovely, but I can't imagine enjoying moving there and spending probably multiple years unable to speak with most people beyond pointing and gesturing.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
... Objectively, Scandianiavia is IMO a nicer place (higher standard of living and on the whole fewer social strains)...
But the weather!
Seven months of winter, more in the far north.
If I moved overseas it would have to be to somewhere with nicer weather.
NPXMP seems to be moderately introverted, almost teetotal, and decidedly and strangely incurious (eg he once said he has no interest in history). And he doesn't care about food at all and subsists on pot noodles
I can see that for him Sweden might be just perfect. Boring, safe, antisocial, sober, devoid of significant history apart from the Vikings, orderly, flat, sensible, bland, mainly terrible food.
But this is not a critique! There is a perfect place for everyone, which is as it should be
I once met a Spanish guy who lived in Greenland and loved it (I met him in Greenland). I asked him, incredulously: what about the winters?? He answered: Are you kidding, I love the winters, the winters are the best bit!
He adored the silence and the blackness and the way he described kayaking or sledging in the total dark... it did sound *almost* appealing
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
The bastards. How dare they be efficient for a change. Didn't get it for our holiday home. I was sure they would cock that up and give it to us.
Yes we chatted about that the other night. When I first saw it I had a little panic then you look at the detail and it is weird. It is only going to apply if not occupied or let out for less than 70 days (I can't see the article behind the paywall, but I assume that is what it says).
That hits practically nobody and is unenforceable.
So it is either nonsense or it is to hit the homes of people so rich they buy houses and leave them more or less abandoned. In which case it isn't a bad idea as it either makes the homes available to locals or puts them back on the market for people who will use them or let them out as holiday homes which adds to the local economy.
Wouldn't be surprised though if it is the former and a complete non runner. From a selfish point of view it doesn't impact me because we, or family members, are at ours for more than 70 days a year, although how you prove that goodness knows.
Obviously I meant 'more than'. Otherwise that would be a really weird rule.
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I certainly would and I am English and British.
This Tory government has also made clear it will not allow a border poll as long as it is in power.
I also as a Tory have made clear I would back Antrim and East Londonderry and maybe Lagan Valley at least staying part of the UK even if a border poll was allowed and voted for a majority to join the Republic, though most present polls show staying in the UK ahead still
Would you be in favour of the government of a united Ireland permitting a referendum for that Unionist enclave in that scenario or would you be in favour of a UDCD (Unilateral Declaration of Continuing Dependence)?
But surely it depends on your circumstances and desires. What might be the perfect country/city when you are 20 will be very different to when you are 40 or 70.
If you are young and ambitious and smart I cannot see a better place to live than London. Arguably the greatest city on earth, for all its many flaws. Its only rival is NYC, and the problem with NYC is that you are in America, which is a great country but cannot be compared to the intense variation and historical and cultural riches that comprise Europe. And in London you have all of Europe as your backyard, it is also easier to get to Asia, Africa
As you grow older London loses its appeal for many, unless you are rich. If you are rich London is still hard to beat. And if you are rich you can afford to fly to warmer countries to avoid the worst of the weather
On the other hand as I grow older I do find myself drawn to the simpler easier sunnier beauties of the Mediterranean coast, or maybe the tropics (eg Thailand). Language is less of an issue than it was thanks to auto-translation, English is spoken everywhere, you can take PB with you: a portable local pub
When my kids are fully grown in a few years I might finally make that move
Blanket statements like "the Nordic countries and Netherlands are objectively better places to live" are nuts. They are fucking boring, for a start. Sweden. My god. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity would slit their wrists within weeks. And that's before winter
What do you class as rich? I earn a good income and consider London very hard to beat, for all the reasons you cite.
In London you probably need to be on a six figure wage to be "rich" (or have inherited wealth of course). That's a rough guess
You would be rich in India on a third of that, in Switzerland you'd be scraping by. Etc
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
It depends to what level you aspire. Among language teachers learning to speak, read and write Chinese is nicknamed "The Five Year Lesson in Humility". 400 distinct syllable sounds for a start and that's before you get to the brain-wrecking nightmare that passes for the dictionary.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
But that is my point. You cannot have the law being applied inconsistently or what is lawful being determined by whether someone chooses to accept an FPN because (a) they don't realise it was given to them wrongly (b) they can't afford to challenge it or (c) they just want to get on with it.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Mmmm, why didn't Starmer just say "I will resign if I am found guilty of breaking the rules, regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not?"
That is what a truly principled person would do.
There is no such thing as the Police finding someone guilty.
The Police can say that the person MIGHT be guilty but the matter does not warrant further action (as they did with Cummings - they said the Barnard Castle trip MAY have been a breach, but the fact he didn't breach social distancing meant it was trivial in their view even if it was a breach). But it would only ever be a "maybe".
They can also issue an FPN, which is a stronger statement that they consider the evidence is there to give them a very good chance of conviction. The recipient then has the choice to spend quite a lot of money going to court and getting a criminal record (which an FPN doesn't give).
In neither case do the Police find the person "guilty". Only the courts can do that. But the latter is a FAR stronger statement - the former would never be more than a "perhaps".
Starmer's whole argument is that he is confident he didn't break the rules. In which case, if the Police says he might (I'll use your words) be guilty but refuse to issue a FPN, it still raises questions over his behaviour. Given he is doing this whole "man of principle" thing, a principled person would say "there is a question over my behaviour, I realise this is not in accordance with the standards I set myself and therefore I resign". He is dancing on a pinhead, trying to wriggle himself out of a situation by clinging to meanings.
It isn't dancing on a pinhead at all. Might have been in breach isn't in breach.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But an absurdly impractical writing system, tones and a completely alien vocabulary.
The writing system is more logical than you might think, in the heat of debate you can bodge it on the tones but actually they are something to hang vocab retention on, and yes no Greco-Roman antecedents for the vocab but a lack of grammar and tense more than make up for it.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
I do wonder if it's much more likely that MPs are thinking through their own actions, and wondering if they might get caught out as well. I can imagine there are some worried MPs out there, of all parties.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
What pitiful bollocks
Labour leader Keir Starmer being solemnly forced to promise his own resignation if he has, indeed, broken the lockdown laws he wanted to prolong and harden is not a good look for Labour. At all. And now he has to wait a month to find out, and he is - it seems - probably gonna b3 personally interviewed by the cops. And his Labour deputy has promised she will resign as well.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
This is prolapsed nonsense on acid. Partygate was bad for the Tories. This is bad for Labour. Coda
Because: (a) The Labour Two get cleared (b) Boris gets slapped with another half-dozen FPNs (c) Boris gets eviscerated by the Grey report and a stack of photos of him doing things there were no excuses for.
Back when it was "I think you should resign" he was just batting it away. But the ante has been upped. Starmer pledged to resign himself. But was then cleared. Of the stuff Johnson is being convicted of repeatedly.
Whilst I expect the PM and his lickspittles to keep spinning why he doesn't need to resign in this scenario, it does make the job harder.
There a hundred better countries in which to live than Britain.
And I intend to do so.
Care to name them?
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
The Nordics and the Netherlands are richer and have a better quality of life than we do. Ireland too. Among the larger European countries Germany certainly does too. I'd say France does too, certainly better work life balance and nicer weather too although the French don't seem very happy with it. Italy is messed up but the food and weather are a lot better. Switzerland has a lot going for it, as does Canada and New Zealand. I'm probably too invested here to move now, and there is still a lot I love about it despite the Tories' best efforts to ruin the place, but the idea that this is objectively the best country in the world to live in is laughable.
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about ranking countries, which is subjective, but that's not remotely close to a hundred countries, so do you care to keep going or agree that "a hundred countries" better than the UK is ridiculous hyperbolic nonsense?
The UK is up there as one of the best, most developed countries to live in on almost any rational metric. As are most other west European nations, the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and Japan depending upon what you prefer.
All have their strengths and foibles, some more than others, but to suggest there's a hundred nations better than any of them is just absurd nonsense.
Heathener is not a troll, but the 100 thing was trolling to get this exact reaction given theres less than 200 nations total.
It's just one example of why s/he is a troll, in the traditional sense.
Still no evidence Starmer said Johnson should resign prior to lying to the HoC but doesn't stop Tories repeating it anyway
What's that got to do with the price of fish? Starmer has said he'll resign if he is fined because he called for Johnson and Sunak to resign after they were fined. In fact, he called on PM to resign when they were under investigation...
Keir Starmer @Keir_Starmer Honesty and decency matter.
After months of denials the Prime Minister is now under criminal investigations for breaking his own lockdown laws.
He needs to do the decent thing and resign.
If Starmer believed Boris broke the rules, and that he himself did not, both of which are probably true, then there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in having called for Boris to resign at that stage.
But surely it depends on your circumstances and desires. What might be the perfect country/city when you are 20 will be very different to when you are 40 or 70.
If you are young and ambitious and smart I cannot see a better place to live than London. Arguably the greatest city on earth, for all its many flaws. Its only rival is NYC, and the problem with NYC is that you are in America, which is a great country but cannot be compared to the intense variation and historical and cultural riches that comprise Europe. And in London you have all of Europe as your backyard, it is also easier to get to Asia, Africa
As you grow older London loses its appeal for many, unless you are rich. If you are rich London is still hard to beat. And if you are rich you can afford to fly to warmer countries to avoid the worst of the weather
On the other hand as I grow older I do find myself drawn to the simpler easier sunnier beauties of the Mediterranean coast, or maybe the tropics (eg Thailand). Language is less of an issue than it was thanks to auto-translation, English is spoken everywhere, you can take PB with you: a portable local pub
When my kids are fully grown in a few years I might finally make that move
Blanket statements like "the Nordic countries and Netherlands are objectively better places to live" are nuts. They are fucking boring, for a start. Sweden. My god. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity would slit their wrists within weeks. And that's before winter
Well mostly yes. (Except for me, the price of London would at any age put me off - an amazing city, certainly, but I could live in the best suburbs of any of the UK's other best cities for the price of living in London's most dispiriting and peripheral district). I'd also add that people are different - for some, the best place on earth to live is somewhere with hills and outdoor pursuits; for others the best place is cities and culture.
Personally, I think there is nowhere better to live than Northern England. But I am one of those people who values what he has higher than what he could have.
Northern England is lovely in places (hideous in others), but I love sunshine and warm weather, it just makes me feel better. So not for me. London has so many advantages they outweigh the weather issue - for now - but then I am prosperous and get to travel a lot. I am writing this staring at the island of Samos across the beautiful clean sunny Med from Turkey - staring at Europe from Asia...
America would be a magnificent place to live.... if they could sort out healthcare/race/guns/crime/Trump. And destroy all the strip malls. And make the cities walkable. No biggie
London is great if you have money, as @Anabobazina said. If you don't, it can be very shit. I like living in London although it used to be a toss up with LA (those days are gone). When I'm 70, it would either be the south of France (weather, lifestyle) or Bologna (fantastic food, a beautiful place to walk around and a great base to explore Italy and, indeed, a lot of Southern Europe).
I, indeed we, as 80+'s, quite like living where we do. Rural-is, but not far from the bus-stop, surgery and pharmacy, a medium sized supermarket not far away, a decent restaurant and some very pleasant pubs. Not quite warm enough much of the time, but Essex doesn't have as much rain as some other parts of the UK. Friendly place to live, too. Still like our holiday trips, when we can, hospital appointments allowing! Wales if in UK, Canaries if out, or a family trip to Thailand. Sadly I've never managed to learn much Thai, although every so often I try.
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I certainly would and I am English and British.
This Tory government has also made clear it will not allow a border poll as long as it is in power.
I also as a Tory have made clear I would back Antrim and East Londonderry and maybe Lagan Valley at least staying part of the UK even if a border poll was allowed and voted for a majority to join the Republic, though most present polls show staying in the UK ahead still
Would you be in favour of the government of a united Ireland permitting a referendum for that Unionist enclave in that scenario or would you be in favour of a UDCD (Unilateral Declaration of Continuing Dependence)?
It would work the same way as when they let Scotland stay part of the EU after 2016.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
The paywall blocks me but I notice in the "most popular" sidebar, number 2 is a story by that plagiarist Sean Thomas who copied it almost word-for-word from the Flintknappers Gazette.
He did, the bastard. And it has been their "most read" or "second most read" article since Sunday morning
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
Absolutely and I still 100% stand by that.
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
To quote Theresa May "nothing has changed".
LOL. We have a country with an internal customs border. How does that sit with your vision of sovereignty.
Perfectly fine, so long as the elected government can change it if the voters aren't happy with that.
Many nations do have special customs arrangements for territories like Northern Ireland which is a pene-exclave.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
Loads of FPNs are issued incorrectly. Surely part of the process is whether an individual chooses to accept one or not. If they are unreasonable, challenge them!
But that is my point. You cannot have the law being applied inconsistently or what is lawful being determined by whether someone chooses to accept an FPN because (a) they don't realise it was given to them wrongly (b) they can't afford to challenge it or (c) they just want to get on with it.
If the police are going to investigate these events and fine people with all the consequences which flow from that, they should spell out in detail the legal basis on which they state that a breach of the regulations occurred.
At the moment we have incomprehensible regulations being, for all we know, incorrectly interpreted and arbitrarily applied.
That's just wrong. Covid may be in the past but this is no way to make law, interpret law or enforce law.
All this stuff about Starmer being “principled” makes me want to be sick in my mouth. This is the guy who more than anyone else tried to overturn a democratic vote because he thought be was better than the voters. When it came to the pandemic, all he wanted to do was make political capital by calling the government reckless for not locking down harder and longer. And all the while he too was floating the rules. He’s a sanctimonious expletive.
Come on, fess up, what's really making you sick is that this no longer looks like playing out well for the Conservatives, whether or not Starmer goes or more likely stays, when a couple of days back you were enjoying the spectacle. Now the tables have been turned.
Mmmm, why didn't Starmer just say "I will resign if I am found guilty of breaking the rules, regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not?"
That is what a truly principled person would do.
Because then you would be complaining that he did not resign for being under investigation and is therefore a hypocrite. Lets face it some people just like complaining.
And some people just like defending the indefensible
Yes I have noticed some of those with Mr Trump....
For the election nerds out there, someone on the Vote UK forum has spotted a mistake with the North Harrow result on Harrow council where the Tories won a seat from Labour by just 5 votes. The number of declared votes is not mathematically possible given the number of issued ballot papers.
If I were Durham Police, the question I'd be asking Labour is "what measures did you take to reduce the spread of COVID?"
The big problem, in my opinion, is that the workers in the video don't look to be doing much social distancing.
Social distancing was guidance and not a legal matter , you can’t get a FPN for that. Clearly you can’t eat with a mask on and I’m not aware that masks had to be worn indoors in settings that weren’t deemed as public .
The government saying you should do something as guidance is irrelevant to the Durham police .
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
What a fucking idiot.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief.
If the EU didn't want Article 16 to be invoked, they shouldn't have signed up to it. They signed up to it, they agreed to it. We're perfectly 100% within our rights to invoke any provisions of the Protocol we choose to invoke.
The issue stems from the way the talks were sequenced, at the EU’s insistence.
The plan was to always to: 1.Agree the WA 2.Negotiate and sign the Trade Agreement, 3.Revisit the Protocol based on the exact TA and operational issues.
This was all discussed at the time.
Of course, it now suits the EU not to be bothered about that last bit - they’ve shown bad faith when it comes to the Trusted Trader scheme and computerised border system, and A16 is all we have left.
A16 is a stepping stone towards a replacement protocol. If it is all we have left then we are screwed as we have no clue what to do.
Except that we do - the Mogg Gambit. Simply declare that the Oven_Ready Deal would be an "act of self-harm" and postpone indefinitely any inbound checks. Impose unilaterally that the EU set all the standards and we will obey them.
He has done both of those things. So the end game for a revised protocol is to formalise this: as we are aligned now and will remain aligned going forward with the EU setting our standards, there is no longer any need for export paperwork to ship GB to NI. Or GB to EU at all.
If I were Durham Police, the question I'd be asking Labour is "what measures did you take to reduce the spread of COVID?"
The big problem, in my opinion, is that the workers in the video don't look to be doing much social distancing.
Although your suggestion is very sensible, it unfortunately has nothing to do with the law at the time because some of them were bonkers.
Indeed, on the day Starmer was inside having a nice curry and chit chat with his colleagues, I was getting told off for chatting to friends in a pub car park.
When the memo was leaked on Saturday, some thought that it cleared Labour because the meal itself was on the agenda, so it was itself work. What's interesting is the insistence of Labour that they continued to work after the meal. That Labour are pushing that line suggest that they think the meal does not count as work.
And that's why I mentioned social distancing. If the meal was simply to feed the workers, they shouldn't really have been stood around having a nice chat at close quarters.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
It depends to what level you aspire. Among language teachers learning to speak, read and write Chinese is nicknamed "The Five Year Lesson in Humility". 400 distinct syllable sounds for a start and that's before you get to the brain-wrecking nightmare that passes for the dictionary.
You can read the newspapers with 3,000 (out of a total of around 70,000) characters. You can also converse with your fellow man (and 女人) with around that. Then you can go specialist where the sky is the limit.
Reading Lu Xun or Hong Lou Men (as everyone has to), or the Renmin Ri Bao might be slightly more demanding, reading Confucius and Laozi actually less so because the interpretation can be your own.
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I certainly would and I am English and British.
This Tory government has also made clear it will not allow a border poll as long as it is in power.
I also as a Tory have made clear I would back Antrim and East Londonderry and maybe Lagan Valley at least staying part of the UK even if a border poll was allowed and voted for a majority to join the Republic, though most present polls show staying in the UK ahead still
Would you be in favour of the government of a united Ireland permitting a referendum for that Unionist enclave in that scenario or would you be in favour of a UDCD (Unilateral Declaration of Continuing Dependence)?
The problem for @HYUFD is that he seems to want a dictatorship which is unacceptable
I accept that Ireland may have a border poll at sometime in the future as indeed may Scotland but the way to win over hearts and minds is to make the case for the union, not imprisonment against the elected will of those electorates
As I mentioned yesterday teatime, I went to watch a joint exercise with Llandudno lifeboats and the coastguard helicopter in Llandudno Bay as they simulated transferring casualties to the helicopter and between the lifeboats. It was fascinating as the inshore lifeboat crew communicated with the helicopter and made sure every protocol was in place before the inshore moved under the downdraft of the helicopter and backed away immediately after the transfer for safety from the downdraft.
It is amazing to think these RNLI crew members are volunteers dedicated their spare time to saving lives at sea while putting themselves in the line of danger and I know I have an interest as my son was part of the crew on the all-weather boat in the exercise, but we are very proud of him and all his colleagues
Turning to Starmer and ‘beergate’. I do not think he had any choice but offer to resign if he receives a FPN but of course he has opened himself to criticism that as a former head of the CPS he is putting Durham Police under unfair pressure. He maintains that he continued work post the curry and beer and has what’s app and other social media confirmation but frankly I do not see the difference between Boris attending a birthday party for 20 minutes or so in between working himself.
I would venture to suggest the problem is that a quiz took place earlier and that attendees allege excessive drinking took place and they say they were not working after 10.00pm
Durham Police must investigate this as the MET have with no favours and if they conclude a breach of covid rules took place then in fairness in law, FPN’s should be issued to all attendees. However, if they follow the ‘Cummings’ decision, then the pressure on Starmer will be immense to quit, not least because of his own demands on Cummings, but to try to stay in office on a technical point would not be acceptable to many of the public
The only hope for Starmer is Durham Police confirm the whole event complied with the covid regulations at the time, and of course social distancing was integral to that and mention of that is in labour’s own leaked memo, when it is clear from the video a group were standing up conversing and eating without social distancing and reminiscent of the Downing Street Garden event but at least that was outside
How this plays out time will tell and I want Boris out of office anyway and the sooner the better
Yes re RNLI. You compare Durham with the Downing Street garden event but iirc the Met have already cleared Boris (and the others) of that one. If you are right, Starmer will be cleared too.
The birthday cake ambush is different because it occurred between meetings and included family and friends, not just co-workers. If it turns out Mrs Starmer popped up to pour the drinks in Durham, that would be embarrassing.
The salient difference is Durham was indoors and against even labours own leaked memo
It will be interesting how those pictures of a group standing up eating and drinking ignoring social distancing is explained
Off topic, I know, but has there ever been a more egregious term in the past decade than "social distancing"?
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
The bastards. How dare they be efficient for a change. Didn't get it for our holiday home. I was sure they would cock that up and give it to us.
Yes we chatted about that the other night. When I first saw it I had a little panic then you look at the detail and it is weird. It is only going to apply if not occupied or let out for less than 70 days (I can't see the article behind the paywall, but I assume that is what it says).
That hits practically nobody and is unenforceable.
So it is either nonsense or it is to hit the homes of people so rich they buy houses and leave them more or less abandoned. In which case it isn't a bad idea as it either makes the homes available to locals or puts them back on the market for people who will use them or let them out as holiday homes which adds to the local economy.
Wouldn't be surprised though if it is the former and a complete non runner. From a selfish point of view it doesn't impact me because we, or family members, are at ours for more than 70 days a year, although how you prove that goodness knows.
At the time of this dinner England was under restrictions which limited meetings with people inside (other than members of your household bubble) other than for exceptions, one of which was meetings reasonably necessary for work.
What the police will have to decide, I think, is whether all the meetings Starmer and others were having on that day in Durham were all reasonably necessary for work, including dinner in the evening. Work matters can after all be discussed over dinner. And even if they are not, if you are working in a long meeting and then stop to have something to eat, it would be curious to say that a meeting where you open your mouth to speak is legal but the moment you open it to eat a sandwich it becomes illegal.
Note: it could be curious but might still be the correct legal interpretation. That might be the legal basis on which the Met issued the FPN against the PM re the cake he ate in his office. We just don't know. The fact that we still don't know is itself pretty worrying and unacceptable.
Or is the proper analysis to look at each individual meeting during the day and assess whether each of them was reasonably necessary for work. So all the work meetings before dinner were OK and work meetings after the dinner were also OK but the actual dinner was not because it was not reasonably necessary for work.
Also a curious interpretation. Starmer's team - judging by what they are saying today - seem to be taking the view that you should look at the totality of the day as a whole not chop it up into bite- sized events (sorry!).
Also what does "reasonably" mean?
Conclusions:-
1. Those regulations were a mess. 2. Who is giving legal advice to the Met and the Durham police? 3. Are they getting the same legal advice on how to interpret the regulations and apply it to the facts they gather? 4. Are they going to publish what that legal advice is? 5. Is that legal advice correct?
You see, if Durham police do not fine Starmer on the basis that it was reasonable of him to eat with people he had been working with all day, especially if he continued to work afterwards, then I find it hard to see how the PM and Sunak were fined for working in the Cabinet Office and stopping briefly to have a cake. They could have argued that they were there to work for a number of hours and a brief pause to eat or drink did not undermine the fact that they were at a work meeting during those hours.
The irony, in what is turning out to be the 2020s version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, would be if Starmer avoids an FPN on legal grounds which could have helped Johnson and Sunak avoid theirs.
I will now go and get a life .....
No one wanted the police to get involved. Sue Grey's report was going to finish him. The Met police stuck their noses in and saved him.
Now thanks to the Mail we can again look forward to the Sue Grey report without distraction
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
I do wonder if it's much more likely that MPs are thinking through their own actions, and wondering if they might get caught out as well. I can imagine there are some worried MPs out there, of all parties.
Most MPs don't have a role to resign from. Starmer isn't offering to, and Johnson isn't being asked to, resign as an MP - just from their very senior positions. So your standard MP, if issued a FPN, just apologises.
There is more at stake for ministers and shadow ministers - but not anywhere near as much as for party leaders. Even if you feel obliged to resign from the front bench, there is a route back (lots of people return after a short spell on the backbenches). For leaders, they are never likely to return to where they were.
As I mentioned yesterday teatime, I went to watch a joint exercise with Llandudno lifeboats and the coastguard helicopter in Llandudno Bay as they simulated transferring casualties to the helicopter and between the lifeboats. It was fascinating as the inshore lifeboat crew communicated with the helicopter and made sure every protocol was in place before the inshore moved under the downdraft of the helicopter and backed away immediately after the transfer for safety from the downdraft.
It is amazing to think these RNLI crew members are volunteers dedicated their spare time to saving lives at sea while putting themselves in the line of danger and I know I have an interest as my son was part of the crew on the all-weather boat in the exercise, but we are very proud of him and all his colleagues
Turning to Starmer and ‘beergate’. I do not think he had any choice but offer to resign if he receives a FPN but of course he has opened himself to criticism that as a former head of the CPS he is putting Durham Police under unfair pressure. He maintains that he continued work post the curry and beer and has what’s app and other social media confirmation but frankly I do not see the difference between Boris attending a birthday party for 20 minutes or so in between working himself.
I would venture to suggest the problem is that a quiz took place earlier and that attendees allege excessive drinking took place and they say they were not working after 10.00pm
Durham Police must investigate this as the MET have with no favours and if they conclude a breach of covid rules took place then in fairness in law, FPN’s should be issued to all attendees. However, if they follow the ‘Cummings’ decision, then the pressure on Starmer will be immense to quit, not least because of his own demands on Cummings, but to try to stay in office on a technical point would not be acceptable to many of the public
The only hope for Starmer is Durham Police confirm the whole event complied with the covid regulations at the time, and of course social distancing was integral to that and mention of that is in labour’s own leaked memo, when it is clear from the video a group were standing up conversing and eating without social distancing and reminiscent of the Downing Street Garden event but at least that was outside
How this plays out time will tell and I want Boris out of office anyway and the sooner the better
Yes re RNLI. You compare Durham with the Downing Street garden event but iirc the Met have already cleared Boris (and the others) of that one. If you are right, Starmer will be cleared too.
The birthday cake ambush is different because it occurred between meetings and included family and friends, not just co-workers. If it turns out Mrs Starmer popped up to pour the drinks in Durham, that would be embarrassing.
The salient difference is Durham was indoors and against even labours own leaked memo
It will be interesting how those pictures of a group standing up eating and drinking ignoring social distancing is explained
Off topic, I know, but has there ever been a more egregious term in the past decade than "social distancing"?
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter from some third party company with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
No letter or hopes of any here any time soon. Nor has anyone on DD had a payment to the best of my knowledge.
Google (or bing) NameOfYourCouncil council tax rebate, and see what they say on the council's website.
Just did. They claim to be making payments from April 29. And aim to be completed by early May. Don't know anyone who's got it mind. They will "send an Online form" to those not on DD. No timescale for that. Again. No one has received it.
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
Absolutely and I still 100% stand by that.
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
To quote Theresa May "nothing has changed".
LOL. We have a country with an internal customs border. How does that sit with your vision of sovereignty.
Perfectly fine, so long as the elected government can change it if the voters aren't happy with that.
Many nations do have special customs arrangements for territories like Northern Ireland which is a pene-exclave.
LOL x2. Our country is split with an internal customs border. Something that it was said no British PM could ever do. Which means that without being told they had to they wouldn't have done it. So your "so long as the elected government can change it..." is simply not applicable.
And it has all created a pathway for a united Ireland. People have differing views on this but again, not something that figured in the Conservative manifesto of 2019.
And all this you see as a tremendous victory. Not understanding, or refusing to, that Britain can withdraw from any agreement (for example the backstop) whenever it wants to (please refer to the EU and Brexit).
What is different from the backstop and the current situation? The UK (as was) could have exited the one and can still exit the other.
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
Currently listening to the new customs arrangements as a result of the UK leaving the EU. Not relevant to most of the burghers on Hartlepool, I'm guessing, so that's one up for Brexit.
Surely we’ll see some domestic energy fixes cheaper than the cap being offered fairly soon….
when do we get the £150 rebate ? (genuine question)
If you pay council tax via dd, you should get it pretty soon, automatically.
If you pay annually, it depends on when your council can be arsed. I got a letter with loads of codes on it, directing me to a shady looking website, with loads of “don’t you dare defraud us” warnings. They took my bank details and I got the payment last week (a few days later). Others in my council area are still waiting for the letter, so it seems to be a bit pot luck.
The bastards. How dare they be efficient for a change. Didn't get it for our holiday home. I was sure they would cock that up and give it to us.
Yes we chatted about that the other night. When I first saw it I had a little panic then you look at the detail and it is weird. It is only going to apply if not occupied or let out for less than 70 days (I can't see the article behind the paywall, but I assume that is what it says).
That hits practically nobody and is unenforceable.
So it is either nonsense or it is to hit the homes of people so rich they buy houses and leave them more or less abandoned. In which case it isn't a bad idea as it either makes the homes available to locals or puts them back on the market for people who will use them or let them out as holiday homes which adds to the local economy.
Wouldn't be surprised though if it is the former and a complete non runner. From a selfish point of view it doesn't impact me because we, or family members, are at ours for more than 70 days a year, although how you prove that goodness knows.
How does this government operate? Spin about levelling up whilst actually make the rich richer.
Lots of plebs in Tory seats complaining about rich second home owners?
Create a bullshit law, that the MPs can cite to locals during their campaigns but has zero impact on the rich second home owners.
This government is actually excellent at political spin, just equally terrible about governing and creating useful law.
As I mentioned yesterday teatime, I went to watch a joint exercise with Llandudno lifeboats and the coastguard helicopter in Llandudno Bay as they simulated transferring casualties to the helicopter and between the lifeboats. It was fascinating as the inshore lifeboat crew communicated with the helicopter and made sure every protocol was in place before the inshore moved under the downdraft of the helicopter and backed away immediately after the transfer for safety from the downdraft.
It is amazing to think these RNLI crew members are volunteers dedicated their spare time to saving lives at sea while putting themselves in the line of danger and I know I have an interest as my son was part of the crew on the all-weather boat in the exercise, but we are very proud of him and all his colleagues
Turning to Starmer and ‘beergate’. I do not think he had any choice but offer to resign if he receives a FPN but of course he has opened himself to criticism that as a former head of the CPS he is putting Durham Police under unfair pressure. He maintains that he continued work post the curry and beer and has what’s app and other social media confirmation but frankly I do not see the difference between Boris attending a birthday party for 20 minutes or so in between working himself.
I would venture to suggest the problem is that a quiz took place earlier and that attendees allege excessive drinking took place and they say they were not working after 10.00pm
Durham Police must investigate this as the MET have with no favours and if they conclude a breach of covid rules took place then in fairness in law, FPN’s should be issued to all attendees. However, if they follow the ‘Cummings’ decision, then the pressure on Starmer will be immense to quit, not least because of his own demands on Cummings, but to try to stay in office on a technical point would not be acceptable to many of the public
The only hope for Starmer is Durham Police confirm the whole event complied with the covid regulations at the time, and of course social distancing was integral to that and mention of that is in labour’s own leaked memo, when it is clear from the video a group were standing up conversing and eating without social distancing and reminiscent of the Downing Street Garden event but at least that was outside
How this plays out time will tell and I want Boris out of office anyway and the sooner the better
Yes re RNLI. You compare Durham with the Downing Street garden event but iirc the Met have already cleared Boris (and the others) of that one. If you are right, Starmer will be cleared too.
The birthday cake ambush is different because it occurred between meetings and included family and friends, not just co-workers. If it turns out Mrs Starmer popped up to pour the drinks in Durham, that would be embarrassing.
The salient difference is Durham was indoors and against even labours own leaked memo
It will be interesting how those pictures of a group standing up eating and drinking ignoring social distancing is explained
Off topic, I know, but has there ever been a more egregious term in the past decade than "social distancing"?
NEVER AGAIN.
Absolutely
Agreed. In terms of the most teeth-grindingly awful usage of that dismal term, I submit: the unimaginably pious: "socially distanced, you understand."
If I were Durham Police, the question I'd be asking Labour is "what measures did you take to reduce the spread of COVID?"
The big problem, in my opinion, is that the workers in the video don't look to be doing much social distancing.
Although your suggestion is very sensible, it unfortunately has nothing to do with the law at the time because some of them were bonkers.
Indeed, on the day Starmer was inside having a nice curry and chit chat with his colleagues, I was getting told off for chatting to friends in a pub car park.
When the memo was leaked on Saturday, some thought that it cleared Labour because the meal itself was on the agenda, so it was itself work. What's interesting is the insistence of Labour that they continued to work after the meal. That Labour are pushing that line suggest that they think the meal does not count as work.
And that's why I mentioned social distancing. If the meal was simply to feed the workers, they shouldn't really have been stood around having a nice chat at close quarters.
I am amazed that Labour think its ok that SKS was filmed chatting indoors stood up with people not from his household, drinking beer with no thought of Covid regulations/procedures at that time. Just imagine their reaction is Boris had been filmed doing the same thing.
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
What a fucking idiot.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief.
If the EU didn't want Article 16 to be invoked, they shouldn't have signed up to it. They signed up to it, they agreed to it. We're perfectly 100% within our rights to invoke any provisions of the Protocol we choose to invoke.
The issue stems from the way the talks were sequenced, at the EU’s insistence.
The plan was to always to: 1.Agree the WA 2.Negotiate and sign the Trade Agreement, 3.Revisit the Protocol based on the exact TA and operational issues.
This was all discussed at the time.
Of course, it now suits the EU not to be bothered about that last bit - they’ve shown bad faith when it comes to the Trusted Trader scheme and computerised border system, and A16 is all we have left.
A16 is a stepping stone towards a replacement protocol. If it is all we have left then we are screwed as we have no clue what to do.
Except that we do - the Mogg Gambit. Simply declare that the Oven_Ready Deal would be an "act of self-harm" and postpone indefinitely any inbound checks. Impose unilaterally that the EU set all the standards and we will obey them.
He has done both of those things. So the end game for a revised protocol is to formalise this: as we are aligned now and will remain aligned going forward with the EU setting our standards, there is no longer any need for export paperwork to ship GB to NI. Or GB to EU at all.
Except that's nonsense.
Tariffs and restrictions where they don't serve a purpose absolutely are an act of self-harm, but that is not a reason to remain aligned with the EU setting our standards.
We are free to set our own standards, while recognising the EU as a safe trading partner granting their standards equivalence to ours.
We would also be free to grant equivalence to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and any other trading partners we wish to do that with. Something we aren't able to do if we remain formally aligned with EU standards as you'd prefer.
That is the problem with the EU. The EEC began with the principle of equivalence, but the EU moved to the principle of harmonisation instead. We are rolling back the clock and going back to the superior principle of equivalence, which leaves us free to diverge as we choose - and only put in inspections if they are actually necessary and actually serve a purpose.
I think this is right Mike and the FT. Having a beer and curry also shows he's not a robot.
It's the principle though, even though the Hate Mail are making a desperate attempt to portray it negatively.
If and when the Sue Gray report appears this will pile pressure on Johnson.
I’m a staunch opponent of the Mail, Express and other propaganda sheets, however, in this situation I think it’s very clear that the initiators of the story were the Labour Party’s own discontented left-wingers. They merely used the Mail as their vehicle. Very few journalists/propagandists turn down a good story. Ethics are as thin on the ground in England’s media as they are in her legislature.
Is that true? The video came from the son of right-wing writer James Delingpole, and doesn't much of the comment from inside the hall come from an independent councillor? Whilst there will be Labour people who would prefer a different leader, I'm not sure they are driving this, unless you mean Lord Mandelson.
Yes I think this line which Leon first proposed on here is probably dubious. The Corbynistas probably helped feed it though.
It's the Mail who are largely responsible. The story was already out there and had circulated for months. The Daily Mail decided that, no, we didn't need to know there's a war on after all. So rather than whingeing about all the nasty attacks on Dear lovable Boris when we should be watching bombs rain down on Donbass, what we really had to get vexed about was a working beer & curry 12 months ago. Starmer was Arch Hypocrite etc. etc.
It's a sign of how nasty things are going to be in the build up to the General Election. The Hate Mail is spilling poison into everything they can lay their hands on, deliberately invoking culture wars and stoking up violence and hatred across the board.
Frankly I can't wait to emigrate from this mean-spirited and angry country.
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
I must admit I don't grasp the relevance of Ange's attendance. Presumably her being there makes it more likely it was a party, because she is a known hardcore raver?
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But an absurdly impratical writing system, tones and a completely alien vocabulary.
Tones are an issue that many get anxious about. You listen and repeat. When I began formal study I had no knowledge of what tone some very common words were. Even though I used them everyday in conversation. Third is pretty obvious. It's much longer and down and up. Fourth brusque. But it doesn't matter half as much as folk think.
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
No that is unfair, not a waste of resource at all. It has kept many officers off the streets so there has recently been a big reduction in the harassment of women and people getting nicked for driving a nice car whilst black.
For the election nerds out there, someone on the Vote UK forum has spotted a mistake with the North Harrow result on Harrow council where the Tories won a seat from Labour by just 5 votes. The number of declared votes is not mathematically possible given the number of issued ballot papers.
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
Maybe lawmakers need to understand the likely outcomes to ill conceived laws better
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
I must admit I don't grasp the relevance of Ange's attendance. Presumably her being there makes it more likely it was a party, because she is a known hardcore raver?
Lets hope no politicians had meetings with Govey during lockdown then.....
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
Absolutely and I still 100% stand by that.
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
To quote Theresa May "nothing has changed".
LOL. We have a country with an internal customs border. How does that sit with your vision of sovereignty.
Perfectly fine, so long as the elected government can change it if the voters aren't happy with that.
Many nations do have special customs arrangements for territories like Northern Ireland which is a pene-exclave.
LOL x2. Our country is split with an internal customs border. Something that it was said no British PM could ever do. Which means that without being told they had to they wouldn't have done it. So your "so long as the elected government can change it..." is simply not applicable.
And it has all created a pathway for a united Ireland. People have differing views on this but again, not something that figured in the Conservative manifesto of 2019.
And all this you see as a tremendous victory. Not understanding, or refusing to, that Britain can withdraw from any agreement (for example the backstop) whenever it wants to (please refer to the EU and Brexit).
What is different from the backstop and the current situation? The UK (as was) could have exited the one and can still exit the other.
So frigging what if our country is split with an internal customs border. So is Germany's. So is France's. So is Italy's. So is the Netherlands. So is Spain's.
What makes this such a travesty for the UK when it is the case for Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands too?
Absolutely so long as the elected government can change it is what matters, which legally couldn't be done in the backstop, as there was in international law no unilateral exit from the backstop whereas there is from the Protocol.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
The paywall blocks me but I notice in the "most popular" sidebar, number 2 is a story by that plagiarist Sean Thomas who copied it almost word-for-word from the Flintknappers Gazette.
He did, the bastard. And it has been their "most read" or "second most read" article since Sunday morning
Why is the great man writing only travelogues recently? What happened to the thrillers? Has the bottom fallen out of the book market?
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
Maybe lawmakers need to understand the likely outcomes to ill conceived laws better
Ms Cyclefree's oft-repeated point. Poor, perchance hasty, drafting, and lack of understanding by those enacting them.
I suspect that the new 'Send them to Rwanda' bill will prove a happy hunting ground for lawyers.
Incidentally, weren't the new Dr Who's parents granted asylum as refugees from persecution there?
As I mentioned yesterday teatime, I went to watch a joint exercise with Llandudno lifeboats and the coastguard helicopter in Llandudno Bay as they simulated transferring casualties to the helicopter and between the lifeboats. It was fascinating as the inshore lifeboat crew communicated with the helicopter and made sure every protocol was in place before the inshore moved under the downdraft of the helicopter and backed away immediately after the transfer for safety from the downdraft.
It is amazing to think these RNLI crew members are volunteers dedicated their spare time to saving lives at sea while putting themselves in the line of danger and I know I have an interest as my son was part of the crew on the all-weather boat in the exercise, but we are very proud of him and all his colleagues
Turning to Starmer and ‘beergate’. I do not think he had any choice but offer to resign if he receives a FPN but of course he has opened himself to criticism that as a former head of the CPS he is putting Durham Police under unfair pressure. He maintains that he continued work post the curry and beer and has what’s app and other social media confirmation but frankly I do not see the difference between Boris attending a birthday party for 20 minutes or so in between working himself.
I would venture to suggest the problem is that a quiz took place earlier and that attendees allege excessive drinking took place and they say they were not working after 10.00pm
Durham Police must investigate this as the MET have with no favours and if they conclude a breach of covid rules took place then in fairness in law, FPN’s should be issued to all attendees. However, if they follow the ‘Cummings’ decision, then the pressure on Starmer will be immense to quit, not least because of his own demands on Cummings, but to try to stay in office on a technical point would not be acceptable to many of the public
The only hope for Starmer is Durham Police confirm the whole event complied with the covid regulations at the time, and of course social distancing was integral to that and mention of that is in labour’s own leaked memo, when it is clear from the video a group were standing up conversing and eating without social distancing and reminiscent of the Downing Street Garden event but at least that was outside
How this plays out time will tell and I want Boris out of office anyway and the sooner the better
Yes re RNLI. You compare Durham with the Downing Street garden event but iirc the Met have already cleared Boris (and the others) of that one. If you are right, Starmer will be cleared too.
The birthday cake ambush is different because it occurred between meetings and included family and friends, not just co-workers. If it turns out Mrs Starmer popped up to pour the drinks in Durham, that would be embarrassing.
The salient difference is Durham was indoors and against even labours own leaked memo
It will be interesting how those pictures of a group standing up eating and drinking ignoring social distancing is explained
And also the parallel is not did any work happen afterwards. In the case if Boris Rishi and the birthday cake it did. The question is who was present and did they all need to stay. If not then apparently all present are in the wrong according to the Met's logic.
So if Labour can demonstrate that
Work was happening Food was taken in a socially distanced manner even if it included beer All those who ate continued to work.
Then they should be OK.
Weak points
-Pubs were closed as people drinking couldn't be trusted to socially distance. - How will they demonstrate social distancing - photos may show otherwise / capacity of room to curries ordered may show this was impossible - There may be no evidence that some of those eating continued to work afterwards. - If they didn't follow their own internal rules why not - who made the decision?
I think it is unfortunate for Labour that the birthday cake event was the first one announced and that it included Rishi. It seems to be a harsh interpretation of an event that was reported at the time in the Times, so is a retrospective fine.
If one of the more flagrant breaches was the first fine then people might be shrugging 'Beergate' off.
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
What a fucking idiot.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief.
If the EU didn't want Article 16 to be invoked, they shouldn't have signed up to it. They signed up to it, they agreed to it. We're perfectly 100% within our rights to invoke any provisions of the Protocol we choose to invoke.
The issue stems from the way the talks were sequenced, at the EU’s insistence.
The plan was to always to: 1.Agree the WA 2.Negotiate and sign the Trade Agreement, 3.Revisit the Protocol based on the exact TA and operational issues.
This was all discussed at the time.
Of course, it now suits the EU not to be bothered about that last bit - they’ve shown bad faith when it comes to the Trusted Trader scheme and computerised border system, and A16 is all we have left.
A16 is a stepping stone towards a replacement protocol. If it is all we have left then we are screwed as we have no clue what to do.
Except that we do - the Mogg Gambit. Simply declare that the Oven_Ready Deal would be an "act of self-harm" and postpone indefinitely any inbound checks. Impose unilaterally that the EU set all the standards and we will obey them.
He has done both of those things. So the end game for a revised protocol is to formalise this: as we are aligned now and will remain aligned going forward with the EU setting our standards, there is no longer any need for export paperwork to ship GB to NI. Or GB to EU at all.
Except that's nonsense.
Tariffs and restrictions where they don't serve a purpose absolutely are an act of self-harm, but that is not a reason to remain aligned with the EU setting our standards.
We are free to set our own standards, while recognising the EU as a safe trading partner granting their standards equivalence to ours.
We would also be free to grant equivalence to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and any other trading partners we wish to do that with. Something we aren't able to do if we remain formally aligned with EU standards as you'd prefer.
That is the problem with the EU. The EEC began with the principle of equivalence, but the EU moved to the principle of harmonisation instead. We are rolling back the clock and going back to the superior principle of equivalence, which leaves us free to diverge as we choose - and only put in inspections if they are actually necessary and actually serve a purpose.
I know that this is your opinion. It is not however the opinion of Jacob Rees-Mogg. They have very literally handed control of standards to the EU for an indefinite period. You and I do not like it (though probably for different reasons) but it is what it is.
It isn't "should we remain aligned", it is "we are remaining aligned as government policy".
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
ITYM the police investigation has successfully kicked the can down the road, and delayed the Gray report, both of which suit Boris.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
The paywall blocks me but I notice in the "most popular" sidebar, number 2 is a story by that plagiarist Sean Thomas who copied it almost word-for-word from the Flintknappers Gazette.
He did, the bastard. And it has been their "most read" or "second most read" article since Sunday morning
Why is the great man writing only travelogues recently? What happened to the thrillers? Has the bottom fallen out of the book market?
You'd have to ask him, but I imagine he quite likes tootling around interesting (and sunny) parts of the world, and getting paid for it
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
Absolutely and I still 100% stand by that.
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
To quote Theresa May "nothing has changed".
LOL. We have a country with an internal customs border. How does that sit with your vision of sovereignty.
Perfectly fine, so long as the elected government can change it if the voters aren't happy with that.
Many nations do have special customs arrangements for territories like Northern Ireland which is a pene-exclave.
LOL x2. Our country is split with an internal customs border. Something that it was said no British PM could ever do. Which means that without being told they had to they wouldn't have done it. So your "so long as the elected government can change it..." is simply not applicable.
And it has all created a pathway for a united Ireland. People have differing views on this but again, not something that figured in the Conservative manifesto of 2019.
And all this you see as a tremendous victory. Not understanding, or refusing to, that Britain can withdraw from any agreement (for example the backstop) whenever it wants to (please refer to the EU and Brexit).
What is different from the backstop and the current situation? The UK (as was) could have exited the one and can still exit the other.
So frigging what if our country is split with an internal customs border. So is Germany's. So is France's. So is Italy's. So is the Netherlands. So is Spain's.
What makes this such a travesty for the UK when it is the case for Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands too?
Absolutely so long as the elected government can change it is what matters, which legally couldn't be done in the backstop, as there was in international law no unilateral exit from the backstop whereas there is from the Protocol.
I am reasonably confident that Carrfour doesn't need to fill in customs forms to send products from Paris to Marseille. Whereas Tesco does need to fill in customs forms to send products from Birmingham to Ballymena.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But an absurdly impractical writing system, tones and a completely alien vocabulary.
The writing system is more logical than you might think, in the heat of debate you can bodge it on the tones but actually they are something to hang vocab retention on, and yes no Greco-Roman antecedents for the vocab but a lack of grammar and tense more than make up for it.
Some of the vocab is guessable too once you know a bit. Many nouns are two (or three) characters put together. So bi is writing implement. Chyan is lead. Yuan dz modern. So. Chyan bi = pencil. Yuan dz bi = biro. 2 favourites of mine. "Fragrant stick" and "modern egg". Can anyone guess?
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
Absolutely and I still 100% stand by that.
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
To quote Theresa May "nothing has changed".
LOL. We have a country with an internal customs border. How does that sit with your vision of sovereignty.
Perfectly fine, so long as the elected government can change it if the voters aren't happy with that.
Many nations do have special customs arrangements for territories like Northern Ireland which is a pene-exclave.
LOL x2. Our country is split with an internal customs border. Something that it was said no British PM could ever do. Which means that without being told they had to they wouldn't have done it. So your "so long as the elected government can change it..." is simply not applicable.
And it has all created a pathway for a united Ireland. People have differing views on this but again, not something that figured in the Conservative manifesto of 2019.
And all this you see as a tremendous victory. Not understanding, or refusing to, that Britain can withdraw from any agreement (for example the backstop) whenever it wants to (please refer to the EU and Brexit).
What is different from the backstop and the current situation? The UK (as was) could have exited the one and can still exit the other.
So frigging what if our country is split with an internal customs border. So is Germany's. So is France's. So is Italy's. So is the Netherlands. So is Spain's.
What makes this such a travesty for the UK when it is the case for Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands too?
Absolutely so long as the elected government can change it is what matters, which legally couldn't be done in the backstop, as there was in international law no unilateral exit from the backstop whereas there is from the Protocol.
The point is that I am unsure whether the PMs of France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands ever said that having an internal border was something that no French, Spanish, German, Italian, or Dutch PM could ever do.
I have no idea where those borders are btw but I'll of course take your word for it.
Plus you really don't understand the concept of sovereignty do you. We as a sovereign UK could and can exit any agreement we damn well want. Backstop, A16, NATO, you name it. Why we can even invade countries far away should we so decide. Do you actually understand what the sovereignty you rightly prize so highly actually means?
If I were Durham Police, the question I'd be asking Labour is "what measures did you take to reduce the spread of COVID?"
The big problem, in my opinion, is that the workers in the video don't look to be doing much social distancing.
Social distancing was guidance and not a legal matter , you can’t get a FPN for that. Clearly you can’t eat with a mask on and I’m not aware that masks had to be worn indoors in settings that weren’t deemed as public .
The government saying you should do something as guidance is irrelevant to the Durham police .
I'm not sure that's true - IIRC someone posted the actual regulations here a couple of days ago and the exception for campaigning specifically required following government guidance.
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
I must admit I don't grasp the relevance of Ange's attendance. Presumably her being there makes it more likely it was a party, because she is a known hardcore raver?
Originally, her presence was relevant purely because it implicated more of the Labour front bench team. Now, the important point is that Labour denied she was there, then had to admit she was after all.
Labour's PR incompetence notwithstanding, the more I hear about this incident, the less interesting it gets.
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
I must admit I don't grasp the relevance of Ange's attendance. Presumably her being there makes it more likely it was a party, because she is a known hardcore raver?
Ha maybe. But could be even worse for SKS if it comes out that Barry 'all play no work' Gardiner was there. There'll be questions to answer then.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But an absurdly impractical writing system, tones and a completely alien vocabulary.
The writing system is more logical than you might think, in the heat of debate you can bodge it on the tones but actually they are something to hang vocab retention on, and yes no Greco-Roman antecedents for the vocab but a lack of grammar and tense more than make up for it.
The US State Department disagrees with you, as do most language teachers I've met.
There a hundred better countries in which to live than Britain.
And I intend to do so.
Care to name them?
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
The Nordics and the Netherlands are richer and have a better quality of life than we do. Ireland too. Among the larger European countries Germany certainly does too. I'd say France does too, certainly better work life balance and nicer weather too although the French don't seem very happy with it. Italy is messed up but the food and weather are a lot better. Switzerland has a lot going for it, as does Canada and New Zealand. I'm probably too invested here to move now, and there is still a lot I love about it despite the Tories' best efforts to ruin the place, but the idea that this is objectively the best country in the world to live in is laughable.
I think that I could quite happily live in any European country, bar current war zones, Canada, USA, most of Latin America, a fair chunk of Africa, SE or NE Asia, Australia or NZ, not nessicarily in that order. It must be over 100 countries. I prefer to live here though.
It is because I care about this country so much that I despise its government.
Well move then if you hate this country and its government so much.
The fact you and Heathener think there are 100 countries better than the UK, when the UK is well above global average income, wealth, life expectancy and PISA education ranking says it all!
Do you even bother to read the posts you reply to?
No. He can't compute anything that isn't his output. Like his repeated assertions yesterday that the state of Northern Ireland existed pre-1923, even in mediaeval times.
To be fair, it has long been part of the nationalist case that Ulster existed; their complaint was and is that Ulster was carved up 100 years ago.
Ulaidh certainly was, but it's not the same thing as NI.
Yes, and as I just said, that is part of the nationalist case.
Indeed, but it's also elementary geography and history.
It is politics.
It is indeed. 'Ulster' = ancient province, overtones of centuries of legitimacy. "NI" = shabby gerrymandered modern partition construct. It's unlike HYUFD to miss that particular trick. Not that Ulster existed before the Cretaceous even in geological terms.
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
What a fucking idiot.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief.
If the EU didn't want Article 16 to be invoked, they shouldn't have signed up to it. They signed up to it, they agreed to it. We're perfectly 100% within our rights to invoke any provisions of the Protocol we choose to invoke.
The issue stems from the way the talks were sequenced, at the EU’s insistence.
The plan was to always to: 1.Agree the WA 2.Negotiate and sign the Trade Agreement, 3.Revisit the Protocol based on the exact TA and operational issues.
This was all discussed at the time.
Of course, it now suits the EU not to be bothered about that last bit - they’ve shown bad faith when it comes to the Trusted Trader scheme and computerised border system, and A16 is all we have left.
A16 is a stepping stone towards a replacement protocol. If it is all we have left then we are screwed as we have no clue what to do.
Except that we do - the Mogg Gambit. Simply declare that the Oven_Ready Deal would be an "act of self-harm" and postpone indefinitely any inbound checks. Impose unilaterally that the EU set all the standards and we will obey them.
He has done both of those things. So the end game for a revised protocol is to formalise this: as we are aligned now and will remain aligned going forward with the EU setting our standards, there is no longer any need for export paperwork to ship GB to NI. Or GB to EU at all.
Except that's nonsense.
Tariffs and restrictions where they don't serve a purpose absolutely are an act of self-harm, but that is not a reason to remain aligned with the EU setting our standards.
We are free to set our own standards, while recognising the EU as a safe trading partner granting their standards equivalence to ours.
We would also be free to grant equivalence to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and any other trading partners we wish to do that with. Something we aren't able to do if we remain formally aligned with EU standards as you'd prefer.
That is the problem with the EU. The EEC began with the principle of equivalence, but the EU moved to the principle of harmonisation instead. We are rolling back the clock and going back to the superior principle of equivalence, which leaves us free to diverge as we choose - and only put in inspections if they are actually necessary and actually serve a purpose.
I know that this is your opinion. It is not however the opinion of Jacob Rees-Mogg. They have very literally handed control of standards to the EU for an indefinite period. You and I do not like it (though probably for different reasons) but it is what it is.
It isn't "should we remain aligned", it is "we are remaining aligned as government policy".
I call bullshit.
Where does he say we are remaining aligned as government policy, formally aligned, as opposed to recognising the EU as an equivalent so there's no need to do checks which is what he actually said?
The top story on German national radio news just now was the reported UK threat unilaterally to pass a domestic law, the contents of which would fundamentally breach a key, legally binding treaty between the UK & EU, in order to appease a party which just lost in NI. https://twitter.com/AndrewPRLevi/status/1523947810521026561
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But an absurdly impractical writing system, tones and a completely alien vocabulary.
The writing system is more logical than you might think, in the heat of debate you can bodge it on the tones but actually they are something to hang vocab retention on, and yes no Greco-Roman antecedents for the vocab but a lack of grammar and tense more than make up for it.
The US State Department disagrees with you, as do most language teachers I've met.
But I'm glad you made it work for you anyway.
I'm impressed. A former colleague is married to a Beijing lady. When they visit her family they get great enjoyment from him getting the tones wrong and coming out with "Please bollocks the orang-utan" or something of the sort when he asks for the soy sauce at table.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
The paywall blocks me but I notice in the "most popular" sidebar, number 2 is a story by that plagiarist Sean Thomas who copied it almost word-for-word from the Flintknappers Gazette.
There a hundred better countries in which to live than Britain.
And I intend to do so.
Care to name them?
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
The Nordics and the Netherlands are richer and have a better quality of life than we do. Ireland too. Among the larger European countries Germany certainly does too. I'd say France does too, certainly better work life balance and nicer weather too although the French don't seem very happy with it. Italy is messed up but the food and weather are a lot better. Switzerland has a lot going for it, as does Canada and New Zealand. I'm probably too invested here to move now, and there is still a lot I love about it despite the Tories' best efforts to ruin the place, but the idea that this is objectively the best country in the world to live in is laughable.
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about ranking countries, which is subjective, but that's not remotely close to a hundred countries, so do you care to keep going or agree that "a hundred countries" better than the UK is ridiculous hyperbolic nonsense?
The UK is up there as one of the best, most developed countries to live in on almost any rational metric. As are most other west European nations, the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and Japan depending upon what you prefer.
All have their strengths and foibles, some more than others, but to suggest there's a hundred nations better than any of them is just absurd nonsense.
Yes I wouldn't say 100. Maybe 10-20? The UN's Human Development Index ranks the UK at #13 which seems about right although their precise ranking wouldn't be exactly the same as mine.
Personally - I think it's difficult to live in a country where you don't speak the language/can't communicate comfortably with most people. Japan is I am sure lovely, but I can't imagine enjoying moving there and spending probably multiple years unable to speak with most people beyond pointing and gesturing.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
... Objectively, Scandianiavia is IMO a nicer place (higher standard of living and on the whole fewer social strains)...
But the weather!
Seven months of winter, more in the far north.
If I moved overseas it would have to be to somewhere with nicer weather.
I knew a guy from a weather forum who moved to Norway specifically to experience the long snowy winters. He regularly posted pictures of feet and indeed metres of deep snow.
The top story on German national radio news just now was the reported UK threat unilaterally to pass a domestic law, the contents of which would fundamentally breach a key, legally binding treaty between the UK & EU, in order to appease a party which just lost in NI. https://twitter.com/AndrewPRLevi/status/1523947810521026561
Germany needs to look at itself and it's behaviour over Ukraine
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
Maybe lawmakers need to understand the likely outcomes to ill conceived laws better
Quite. Very pleased the RNLI seems to be off the hook, but it took far too long, and should never have been a possibility in the first place.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But an absurdly impractical writing system, tones and a completely alien vocabulary.
The writing system is more logical than you might think, in the heat of debate you can bodge it on the tones but actually they are something to hang vocab retention on, and yes no Greco-Roman antecedents for the vocab but a lack of grammar and tense more than make up for it.
Some of the vocab is guessable too once you know a bit. Many nouns are two (or three) characters put together. So bi is writing implement. Chyan is lead. Yuan dz modern. So. Chyan bi = pencil. Yuan dz bi = biro. 2 favourites of mine. "Fragrant stick" and "modern egg". Can anyone guess?
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But an absurdly impractical writing system, tones and a completely alien vocabulary.
The writing system is more logical than you might think, in the heat of debate you can bodge it on the tones but actually they are something to hang vocab retention on, and yes no Greco-Roman antecedents for the vocab but a lack of grammar and tense more than make up for it.
Some of the vocab is guessable too once you know a bit. Many nouns are two (or three) characters put together. So bi is writing implement. Chyan is lead. Yuan dz modern. So. Chyan bi = pencil. Yuan dz bi = biro. 2 favourites of mine. "Fragrant stick" and "modern egg". Can anyone guess?
The top story on German national radio news just now was the reported UK threat unilaterally to pass a domestic law, the contents of which would fundamentally breach a key, legally binding treaty between the UK & EU, in order to appease a party which just lost in NI. https://twitter.com/AndrewPRLevi/status/1523947810521026561
Germany needs to look at itself and it's behaviour over Ukraine
I'm not really sure why implementing a provision of a treaty is a breach of that treaty, but there you go.
The genius of the Tories has been to get everyone focusing on comparing Beergate with the birthday cake (thanks to the Met), which was one of the least problematic of all the Downing Street parties.
And also managing to avoid any focus on lying in parliament, which ultimately is the main reason for Boris' resignation.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But an absurdly impractical writing system, tones and a completely alien vocabulary.
The writing system is more logical than you might think, in the heat of debate you can bodge it on the tones but actually they are something to hang vocab retention on, and yes no Greco-Roman antecedents for the vocab but a lack of grammar and tense more than make up for it.
Some of the vocab is guessable too once you know a bit. Many nouns are two (or three) characters put together. So bi is writing implement. Chyan is lead. Yuan dz modern. So. Chyan bi = pencil. Yuan dz bi = biro. 2 favourites of mine. "Fragrant stick" and "modern egg". Can anyone guess?
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
Absolutely and I still 100% stand by that.
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
To quote Theresa May "nothing has changed".
LOL. We have a country with an internal customs border. How does that sit with your vision of sovereignty.
Perfectly fine, so long as the elected government can change it if the voters aren't happy with that.
Many nations do have special customs arrangements for territories like Northern Ireland which is a pene-exclave.
LOL x2. Our country is split with an internal customs border. Something that it was said no British PM could ever do. Which means that without being told they had to they wouldn't have done it. So your "so long as the elected government can change it..." is simply not applicable.
And it has all created a pathway for a united Ireland. People have differing views on this but again, not something that figured in the Conservative manifesto of 2019.
And all this you see as a tremendous victory. Not understanding, or refusing to, that Britain can withdraw from any agreement (for example the backstop) whenever it wants to (please refer to the EU and Brexit).
What is different from the backstop and the current situation? The UK (as was) could have exited the one and can still exit the other.
So frigging what if our country is split with an internal customs border. So is Germany's. So is France's. So is Italy's. So is the Netherlands. So is Spain's.
What makes this such a travesty for the UK when it is the case for Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands too?
Absolutely so long as the elected government can change it is what matters, which legally couldn't be done in the backstop, as there was in international law no unilateral exit from the backstop whereas there is from the Protocol.
The point is that I am unsure whether the PMs of France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands ever said that having an internal border was something that no French, Spanish, German, Italian, or Dutch PM could ever do.
I have no idea where those borders are btw but I'll of course take your word for it.
Plus you really don't understand the concept of sovereignty do you. We as a sovereign UK could and can exit any agreement we damn well want. Backstop, A16, NATO, you name it. Why we can even invade countries far away should we so decide. Do you actually understand what the sovereignty you rightly prize so highly actually means?
Whatever a politician says is normally political spin, take with a grain of salt, but yes there's absolutely nothing wrong with countries having pene-exclaves or similar having separate customs arrangements which is why many nations do, entirely reasonably, if that is what makes sense. Including all those major west European nations.
What matters is that the voters get a say by voting for the government, and that the government can change the rules if the voters are unhappy.
Yes we could have violated the backstop by breaking international law and torn up the entire agreement, but to do so is illegal under international law and would be bad faith and opposed by plenty here including no doubt yourself.
The difference with the Protocol over the Backstop is it not just got GB out of it and merely special arrangements for our pene-exclave in NI, but it gave us a LEGAL exit from the special arrangements too, if we choose to invoke it. That is infinitely superior to only having illegal solutions don't you think?
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
What a fucking idiot.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief.
If the EU didn't want Article 16 to be invoked, they shouldn't have signed up to it. They signed up to it, they agreed to it. We're perfectly 100% within our rights to invoke any provisions of the Protocol we choose to invoke.
The issue stems from the way the talks were sequenced, at the EU’s insistence.
The plan was to always to: 1.Agree the WA 2.Negotiate and sign the Trade Agreement, 3.Revisit the Protocol based on the exact TA and operational issues.
This was all discussed at the time.
Of course, it now suits the EU not to be bothered about that last bit - they’ve shown bad faith when it comes to the Trusted Trader scheme and computerised border system, and A16 is all we have left.
A16 is a stepping stone towards a replacement protocol. If it is all we have left then we are screwed as we have no clue what to do.
Except that we do - the Mogg Gambit. Simply declare that the Oven_Ready Deal would be an "act of self-harm" and postpone indefinitely any inbound checks. Impose unilaterally that the EU set all the standards and we will obey them.
He has done both of those things. So the end game for a revised protocol is to formalise this: as we are aligned now and will remain aligned going forward with the EU setting our standards, there is no longer any need for export paperwork to ship GB to NI. Or GB to EU at all.
Except that's nonsense.
Tariffs and restrictions where they don't serve a purpose absolutely are an act of self-harm, but that is not a reason to remain aligned with the EU setting our standards.
We are free to set our own standards, while recognising the EU as a safe trading partner granting their standards equivalence to ours.
We would also be free to grant equivalence to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and any other trading partners we wish to do that with. Something we aren't able to do if we remain formally aligned with EU standards as you'd prefer.
That is the problem with the EU. The EEC began with the principle of equivalence, but the EU moved to the principle of harmonisation instead. We are rolling back the clock and going back to the superior principle of equivalence, which leaves us free to diverge as we choose - and only put in inspections if they are actually necessary and actually serve a purpose.
I know that this is your opinion. It is not however the opinion of Jacob Rees-Mogg. They have very literally handed control of standards to the EU for an indefinite period. You and I do not like it (though probably for different reasons) but it is what it is.
It isn't "should we remain aligned", it is "we are remaining aligned as government policy".
I call bullshit.
Where does he say we are remaining aligned as government policy, formally aligned, as opposed to recognising the EU as an equivalent so there's no need to do checks which is what he actually said?
Who said formally aligned? I didn't. Its just that we have ceded all standards to the EU for an indefinite period and have not proposed any of the alternatives that you want.
Its an absurd situation. We have imposed one-way costs on ourselves.
The genius of the Tories has been to get everyone focusing on comparing Beergate with the birthday cake (thanks to the Met), which was one of the least problematic of all the Downing Street parties.
And also managing to avoid any focus on lying in parliament, which ultimately is the main reason for Boris' resignation.
I would tend to disagree. I don’t think most Brits care about the PM lying in Parliament (they assume they all do it). They do care about the “one rule for them one for us” stuff. That’s the bit they are trying to neutralise through Starmer, basically by saying “see, we’re all bastards”.
The top story on German national radio news just now was the reported UK threat unilaterally to pass a domestic law, the contents of which would fundamentally breach a key, legally binding treaty between the UK & EU, in order to appease a party which just lost in NI. https://twitter.com/AndrewPRLevi/status/1523947810521026561
Double-bullshit.
Invoking a provision of the Protocol doesn't break the Treaty, it is part and parcel of the Treaty.
And NI has a stupid PR voting, just like Germany does themselves. The DUP and other parties won the right to be in the NI Government at the election thanks to the stupid PR voting system they have, so they didn't lose the election.
Funny how so many people normally keen on PR want to apply FPTP principles to Northern Ireland right now, isn't it?
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
Absolutely and I still 100% stand by that.
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
To quote Theresa May "nothing has changed".
LOL. We have a country with an internal customs border. How does that sit with your vision of sovereignty.
Perfectly fine, so long as the elected government can change it if the voters aren't happy with that.
Many nations do have special customs arrangements for territories like Northern Ireland which is a pene-exclave.
LOL x2. Our country is split with an internal customs border. Something that it was said no British PM could ever do. Which means that without being told they had to they wouldn't have done it. So your "so long as the elected government can change it..." is simply not applicable.
And it has all created a pathway for a united Ireland. People have differing views on this but again, not something that figured in the Conservative manifesto of 2019.
And all this you see as a tremendous victory. Not understanding, or refusing to, that Britain can withdraw from any agreement (for example the backstop) whenever it wants to (please refer to the EU and Brexit).
What is different from the backstop and the current situation? The UK (as was) could have exited the one and can still exit the other.
So frigging what if our country is split with an internal customs border. So is Germany's. So is France's. So is Italy's. So is the Netherlands. So is Spain's.
What makes this such a travesty for the UK when it is the case for Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands too?
Absolutely so long as the elected government can change it is what matters, which legally couldn't be done in the backstop, as there was in international law no unilateral exit from the backstop whereas there is from the Protocol.
The point is that I am unsure whether the PMs of France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands ever said that having an internal border was something that no French, Spanish, German, Italian, or Dutch PM could ever do.
I have no idea where those borders are btw but I'll of course take your word for it.
Plus you really don't understand the concept of sovereignty do you. We as a sovereign UK could and can exit any agreement we damn well want. Backstop, A16, NATO, you name it. Why we can even invade countries far away should we so decide. Do you actually understand what the sovereignty you rightly prize so highly actually means?
I am also mystified by the idea France, Spain, Germany etc have "internal customs borders"
Does Bart mean the colonies and dependencies? France maybe, but do they really count as "internal"? Spain only has Ceuta and Melilla. Germany has nothing of the sort, not even a San Marino (which is in the Single Market anyway)
There a hundred better countries in which to live than Britain.
And I intend to do so.
Care to name them?
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
The Nordics and the Netherlands are richer and have a better quality of life than we do. Ireland too. Among the larger European countries Germany certainly does too. I'd say France does too, certainly better work life balance and nicer weather too although the French don't seem very happy with it. Italy is messed up but the food and weather are a lot better. Switzerland has a lot going for it, as does Canada and New Zealand. I'm probably too invested here to move now, and there is still a lot I love about it despite the Tories' best efforts to ruin the place, but the idea that this is objectively the best country in the world to live in is laughable.
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about ranking countries, which is subjective, but that's not remotely close to a hundred countries, so do you care to keep going or agree that "a hundred countries" better than the UK is ridiculous hyperbolic nonsense?
The UK is up there as one of the best, most developed countries to live in on almost any rational metric. As are most other west European nations, the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and Japan depending upon what you prefer.
All have their strengths and foibles, some more than others, but to suggest there's a hundred nations better than any of them is just absurd nonsense.
Yes I wouldn't say 100. Maybe 10-20? The UN's Human Development Index ranks the UK at #13 which seems about right although their precise ranking wouldn't be exactly the same as mine.
Personally - I think it's difficult to live in a country where you don't speak the language/can't communicate comfortably with most people. Japan is I am sure lovely, but I can't imagine enjoying moving there and spending probably multiple years unable to speak with most people beyond pointing and gesturing.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
... Objectively, Scandianiavia is IMO a nicer place (higher standard of living and on the whole fewer social strains)...
But the weather!
Seven months of winter, more in the far north.
If I moved overseas it would have to be to somewhere with nicer weather.
I knew a guy from a weather forum who moved to Norway specifically to experience the long snowy winters. He regularly posted pictures of feet and indeed metres of deep snow.
Wouldn't suit everyone!
I have a friend who was motivated to move to Manchester partly by the weather. He is from Newfoundland, and marvels constantly at how mild it is here.
If I were Durham Police, the question I'd be asking Labour is "what measures did you take to reduce the spread of COVID?"
The big problem, in my opinion, is that the workers in the video don't look to be doing much social distancing.
From what I can see, I would criticise the organisers for the poor social distancing at the Miners' Hall event. They had a duty of care to the attendees and the wider community. I agree.
Poor social distancing at an event he attended is only Starmer's responsibility at an oversight level and is not at all an issue for the Durham Police.
So @thetimes reporting Liz Truss to scrap Northern Ireland protocol - or at least parts of it - next week. This will trigger retaliation from EU which could make relations v difficult. EU likely to launch legal action against and suspend co-operation with UK on most issues .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1523930984261033985
What a fucking idiot.
We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis. We signed up to this. We agreed to it. It’s beyond belief.
If the EU didn't want Article 16 to be invoked, they shouldn't have signed up to it. They signed up to it, they agreed to it. We're perfectly 100% within our rights to invoke any provisions of the Protocol we choose to invoke.
The issue stems from the way the talks were sequenced, at the EU’s insistence.
The plan was to always to: 1.Agree the WA 2.Negotiate and sign the Trade Agreement, 3.Revisit the Protocol based on the exact TA and operational issues.
This was all discussed at the time.
Of course, it now suits the EU not to be bothered about that last bit - they’ve shown bad faith when it comes to the Trusted Trader scheme and computerised border system, and A16 is all we have left.
A16 is a stepping stone towards a replacement protocol. If it is all we have left then we are screwed as we have no clue what to do.
Except that we do - the Mogg Gambit. Simply declare that the Oven_Ready Deal would be an "act of self-harm" and postpone indefinitely any inbound checks. Impose unilaterally that the EU set all the standards and we will obey them.
He has done both of those things. So the end game for a revised protocol is to formalise this: as we are aligned now and will remain aligned going forward with the EU setting our standards, there is no longer any need for export paperwork to ship GB to NI. Or GB to EU at all.
Except that's nonsense.
Tariffs and restrictions where they don't serve a purpose absolutely are an act of self-harm, but that is not a reason to remain aligned with the EU setting our standards.
We are free to set our own standards, while recognising the EU as a safe trading partner granting their standards equivalence to ours.
We would also be free to grant equivalence to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and any other trading partners we wish to do that with. Something we aren't able to do if we remain formally aligned with EU standards as you'd prefer.
That is the problem with the EU. The EEC began with the principle of equivalence, but the EU moved to the principle of harmonisation instead. We are rolling back the clock and going back to the superior principle of equivalence, which leaves us free to diverge as we choose - and only put in inspections if they are actually necessary and actually serve a purpose.
I know that this is your opinion. It is not however the opinion of Jacob Rees-Mogg. They have very literally handed control of standards to the EU for an indefinite period. You and I do not like it (though probably for different reasons) but it is what it is.
It isn't "should we remain aligned", it is "we are remaining aligned as government policy".
I call bullshit.
Where does he say we are remaining aligned as government policy, formally aligned, as opposed to recognising the EU as an equivalent so there's no need to do checks which is what he actually said?
Who said formally aligned? I didn't. Its just that we have ceded all standards to the EU for an indefinite period and have not proposed any of the alternatives that you want.
Its an absurd situation. We have imposed one-way costs on ourselves.
You did, you claimed we should be formally aligned So the end game for a revised protocol is to formalise this: as we are aligned now and will remain aligned going forward with the EU setting our standards. Formal alignment is a terrible idea, informal equivalence is far, far superior.
It isn't absurd, we have dropped the one-way costs. They're the ones imposing costs on themselves.
Economics shows that tariffs and similar barriers are a cost to the nation imposing the cost. They're imposing costs by having unnecessary checks on nations with equivalent standards, a stupidity we had to follow if we were members - and a stupidity we would have to restart following if we formalised alignment.
Recognising developed nations as having equivalence is cutting costs, not adding them or ceding standards. We should do so with other developed nations too.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It can be for Anglophones. You've got a lot of grammar, different alphabet and precious little shared vocabulary. However, the spelling is very regular and the pronunciation is extremely predictable from the written form if the stress marks are present. Just remember to flatten your terminal 'O' sounds so you speak like an educated Muscovite not a Dagestani apricot farmer.
Sounds a bit like Korean (which I've just started to try to learn) in that respect. Ditto sounding like a Seoulite, rather than a Busan fisherman.
The alphabet is also dead easy to learn - if you already speak Korean.
If I were Durham Police, the question I'd be asking Labour is "what measures did you take to reduce the spread of COVID?"
The big problem, in my opinion, is that the workers in the video don't look to be doing much social distancing.
Although your suggestion is very sensible, it unfortunately has nothing to do with the law at the time because some of them were bonkers.
Indeed, on the day Starmer was inside having a nice curry and chit chat with his colleagues, I was getting told off for chatting to friends in a pub car park.
When the memo was leaked on Saturday, some thought that it cleared Labour because the meal itself was on the agenda, so it was itself work. What's interesting is the insistence of Labour that they continued to work after the meal. That Labour are pushing that line suggest that they think the meal does not count as work.
And that's why I mentioned social distancing. If the meal was simply to feed the workers, they shouldn't really have been stood around having a nice chat at close quarters.
I mean the memo doesn't clear them in that respect as it's marked as dinner with Mary Foy MP and work isnt mentioned. No zoom call etc during dinner. Sitting about having dinner and booze chatting strategy was definitely not allowed or reasonably necessary under the rules in April 21, so the dinner needed to have a main work aspect that could not be done remotely. If it did he will be ok. I'm certain it didn't, it was a jolly break with Mary and the gang, the sort of thing we'd have all like to be able to do with mates or even colleagues. A lot of this is perception and treating everyone the same. What happened in Durham isn't exactly skullduggery but that's not the point - we all suffered and had to do and avoid doing ridiculously simple things in the name of false god Lockdown, Starmer and especially the number 10 party crew seem to think being in politics means the rules weren't really meant for them. That is what's really pissing people off. Starner simply shouldn't have been having a beer and nosh with pals indoors. In any circumstance. And his insistence that this was just how they did it on the campaign trail means he doesnt 'get it' - if you're Mr integrity you fall over yourself to suffer like everyone else you voted to make miserable. The whole thing is lunacy, but lockdown was lunacy so it fits.
The top story on German national radio news just now was the reported UK threat unilaterally to pass a domestic law, the contents of which would fundamentally breach a key, legally binding treaty between the UK & EU, in order to appease a party which just lost in NI. https://twitter.com/AndrewPRLevi/status/1523947810521026561
Germany needs to look at itself and it's behaviour over Ukraine
A beautiful squirrel there. Lovely fluffy tail. But needs an anal bleach.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
You'd pick up the utilitarian basics in months (say A1, A2 if you worked at it a bit) but getting the stage where you can have casual social interactions with people you don't know or lucidly converse on unfamiliar and unprepared topics (B2) takes years of immersion and formal study for most people.
When Mrs DA went to university in Russia she had 12 months of 40 hours/week classroom instruction plus self directed study plus immersion to get to B2 in year. Very few people have the motivation and time to devote to that.
"Picking Up" languages by just living among the native speaking community is not very effective for most people. An important concept in language teaching is "intervention". That is, we identify a student's slip and correct it. Now a random interlocutor in France doesn't know or care about this and so isn't going to explain that when using le participe passé and the object procedes the verb, the participle agrees, in number and gender, with the object not the subject. Contrast with the case where the participle precedes the object and is therefore invariant.
Russian is a bloody difficult language to learn!
It's average I would say. It's not French or Spanish, but it's not Arabic or Chinese either.
The US State Department puts it in Category III (of IV).
Chinese is easy peasy to learn. No grammar, tense, time-manner-place, the Romans having been about to attack, etc.
Just learn the vocab (which is pictorial) and you can speak the language.
But an absurdly impractical writing system, tones and a completely alien vocabulary.
The writing system is more logical than you might think, in the heat of debate you can bodge it on the tones but actually they are something to hang vocab retention on, and yes no Greco-Roman antecedents for the vocab but a lack of grammar and tense more than make up for it.
The US State Department disagrees with you, as do most language teachers I've met.
But I'm glad you made it work for you anyway.
I'm impressed. A former colleague is married to a Beijing lady. When they visit her family they get great enjoyment from him getting the tones wrong and coming out with "Please bollocks the orang-utan" or something of the sort when he asks for the soy sauce at table.
It's a good dinner party story but unlikely in practice that your former colleague's family would be as rude as to not make an effort to understand tones which, as @dixiedean has noted, are not as critical as people think.
In what possible universe is this sequence of events bad for the Conservatives?
'Nervy Tories now fear that they have overplayed their hand... That is why Jacob Rees-Mogg last night was so reluctant to press the issue when he appeared on Andrew Neil's Channel 4 show.'
The paywall blocks me but I notice in the "most popular" sidebar, number 2 is a story by that plagiarist Sean Thomas who copied it almost word-for-word from the Flintknappers Gazette.
He did, the bastard. And it has been their "most read" or "second most read" article since Sunday morning
There a hundred better countries in which to live than Britain.
And I intend to do so.
Care to name them?
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
The Nordics and the Netherlands are richer and have a better quality of life than we do. Ireland too. Among the larger European countries Germany certainly does too. I'd say France does too, certainly better work life balance and nicer weather too although the French don't seem very happy with it. Italy is messed up but the food and weather are a lot better. Switzerland has a lot going for it, as does Canada and New Zealand. I'm probably too invested here to move now, and there is still a lot I love about it despite the Tories' best efforts to ruin the place, but the idea that this is objectively the best country in the world to live in is laughable.
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about ranking countries, which is subjective, but that's not remotely close to a hundred countries, so do you care to keep going or agree that "a hundred countries" better than the UK is ridiculous hyperbolic nonsense?
The UK is up there as one of the best, most developed countries to live in on almost any rational metric. As are most other west European nations, the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and Japan depending upon what you prefer.
All have their strengths and foibles, some more than others, but to suggest there's a hundred nations better than any of them is just absurd nonsense.
Yes I wouldn't say 100. Maybe 10-20? The UN's Human Development Index ranks the UK at #13 which seems about right although their precise ranking wouldn't be exactly the same as mine.
Personally - I think it's difficult to live in a country where you don't speak the language/can't communicate comfortably with most people. Japan is I am sure lovely, but I can't imagine enjoying moving there and spending probably multiple years unable to speak with most people beyond pointing and gesturing.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
... Objectively, Scandianiavia is IMO a nicer place (higher standard of living and on the whole fewer social strains)...
But the weather!
Seven months of winter, more in the far north.
If I moved overseas it would have to be to somewhere with nicer weather.
I knew a guy from a weather forum who moved to Norway specifically to experience the long snowy winters. He regularly posted pictures of feet and indeed metres of deep snow.
Wouldn't suit everyone!
I have a friend who was motivated to move to Manchester partly by the weather. He is from Newfoundland, and marvels constantly at how mild it is here.
Yes, where you come FROM is hugely important
I have a Finnish friend who used to delight in the amazing, glorious mildness of Cornish winters (and of course they are nice, compared to Finland). Then the rain started to get to her; she's back in Helsinki now, but still has a hankering for Falmouth
I have another Canadian friend who is also in Cornwall who still takes great joy in "the lack of insects". I had no idea this was such an issue in parts of Canada but apparently it is. She claims the summers are ruined by bugs and mosquitos and the rest - like Scotland's midges times ten (her words). And of course the winters are abysmal
It's hard for Brits to believe we might have "nicer" weather than somewhere else, but in limited cases it is true
Still no evidence Starmer said Johnson should resign prior to lying to the HoC but doesn't stop Tories repeating it anyway
What's that got to do with the price of fish? Starmer has said he'll resign if he is fined because he called for Johnson and Sunak to resign after they were fined. In fact, he called on PM to resign when they were under investigation...
Keir Starmer @Keir_Starmer Honesty and decency matter.
After months of denials the Prime Minister is now under criminal investigations for breaking his own lockdown laws.
He needs to do the decent thing and resign.
If Starmer resigns, Rayner resigns too.
Labour then has to have a leader who at least self-identifies as a women. Probably Ed Miliband in a dress. Rachel Reeves.
The Tories then have to oust Boris. Electorally toxic to try and plough on. The LE losses were at the very top end of what was thought possible (when you ignore the blatant expectation management of 500). That doesn't change in two years.
So facing the new Labour leader, Tories will also go for a woman. After a lot of faffing about, the members get to choose between Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt. Which Mordaunt wins handily.
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I can’t remember now. Was it you saying a week ago that Raynor only attended curry night over zoom?
By any sensible definition, an office birthday cake for the boss during the working day is not a bigger breach than curry and beers until 1am.
I just wish Johnson and Starmer would host a joint a press conference to apologise. For implementing such I’ll advised anti libertarian laws in the first place that set everyone up to break, purposely or inadvertently.
No, wasn't me. The Rayner attendance doesn't change anything fundamental imo. I'm just looking at the law and comparing it against the event. It was legal. I can't see any reasonable interpretation where it wasn't. The birthday cake thing was illegal because it wasn't linked to work. It was trivial, though, and I think Sunak in particular can count himself unlucky to have got a fine for it.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
Maybe lawmakers need to understand the likely outcomes to ill conceived laws better
Quite. Very pleased the RNLI seems to be off the hook, but it took far too long, and should never have been a possibility in the first place.
Probably although you can argue its shown the system working.
When will the DUP and other associated so called "Loyalists" realise the world has seriously moved on and few people in England, Wales or Scotland would worry one way or the other if a border poll was held, even if Ireland was united.
I think they know that full well.
Which is why they're so passionate themselves in preventing it - because they know nobody else is going to do so for them.
I was re-reading (don't ask) posts from a few years ago post-2016 when the great matter for debate was some of us saying there would never be an internal border on the island of Ireland and others (thinking you and @MarqueeMark here) saying the govt will call the EU's bluff, there won't be any checks anywhere and just let the EU try to police a border on the island.
Never in a million years did either side think that Boris would end up doing what no British PM could ever do and partition the UK, establish an internal border between GB and NI, and thereby set out a clear path for Irish independence.
Boris, eh.
Absolutely and I still 100% stand by that.
Theresa May screwed the pooch by agreeing to EU's sequencing in 2017, and the Remain Parliament left Boris no alternative but what was agreed in 2019, which at least kept Britain out of the EU's power and left both NI voters and the UK with the ability to remove NI from special arrangements too.
But absolutely, call the bluff, invoke Article 16 and dare the EU to put internal border on the island of Ireland. They're not going to. They're bluffing now, just as they were six years ago.
To quote Theresa May "nothing has changed".
LOL. We have a country with an internal customs border. How does that sit with your vision of sovereignty.
Perfectly fine, so long as the elected government can change it if the voters aren't happy with that.
Many nations do have special customs arrangements for territories like Northern Ireland which is a pene-exclave.
LOL x2. Our country is split with an internal customs border. Something that it was said no British PM could ever do. Which means that without being told they had to they wouldn't have done it. So your "so long as the elected government can change it..." is simply not applicable.
And it has all created a pathway for a united Ireland. People have differing views on this but again, not something that figured in the Conservative manifesto of 2019.
And all this you see as a tremendous victory. Not understanding, or refusing to, that Britain can withdraw from any agreement (for example the backstop) whenever it wants to (please refer to the EU and Brexit).
What is different from the backstop and the current situation? The UK (as was) could have exited the one and can still exit the other.
So frigging what if our country is split with an internal customs border. So is Germany's. So is France's. So is Italy's. So is the Netherlands. So is Spain's.
What makes this such a travesty for the UK when it is the case for Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands too?
Absolutely so long as the elected government can change it is what matters, which legally couldn't be done in the backstop, as there was in international law no unilateral exit from the backstop whereas there is from the Protocol.
The point is that I am unsure whether the PMs of France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands ever said that having an internal border was something that no French, Spanish, German, Italian, or Dutch PM could ever do.
I have no idea where those borders are btw but I'll of course take your word for it.
Plus you really don't understand the concept of sovereignty do you. We as a sovereign UK could and can exit any agreement we damn well want. Backstop, A16, NATO, you name it. Why we can even invade countries far away should we so decide. Do you actually understand what the sovereignty you rightly prize so highly actually means?
I am also mystified by the idea France, Spain, Germany etc have "internal customs borders"
Does Bart mean the colonies and dependencies? France maybe, but do they really count as "internal"? Spain only has Ceuta and Melilla. Germany has nothing of the sort, not even a San Marino (which is in the Single Market anyway)
I wouldn't dream of casting nasturtiums upon BR's knowledge of these things. I did idly wonder where on earth (in France, Spain, etc) they might be but I'm sure he's got the answers up his sleeve.
On topic. This is a good strong response by Keir Starmer, the best move in the circumstances, and I think it will work because having not broken the law he isn't going to be fined. Fines are for people who have broken the law not for people who haven't. That's the system we have. Bit boring but there you go.
But I can't quite stretch to it being a net boost for him. I see it more as damage limitation. It would have been better if he weren't being investigated by the police. Just that sentence "being investigated by the police" or (once cleared) "was investigated by the police" is not what you want in the vicinity of a LOTO looking to emphasize the difference between him and a sleazeball of a PM.
I don't know. It gets him on the front pages, and unless he gets fined, that's a net positive, I think. Only the most partisan who are never going to vote for him anyway will be impressed by the Mail's stream of self contradictory ordure.
There a hundred better countries in which to live than Britain.
And I intend to do so.
Care to name them?
I know Vladimir Putin hates Britain with a passion now because of our ardent support of Ukraine, but what reason would you have to despise Britain so much that you'd think there are a hundred better countries to live in?
The Nordics and the Netherlands are richer and have a better quality of life than we do. Ireland too. Among the larger European countries Germany certainly does too. I'd say France does too, certainly better work life balance and nicer weather too although the French don't seem very happy with it. Italy is messed up but the food and weather are a lot better. Switzerland has a lot going for it, as does Canada and New Zealand. I'm probably too invested here to move now, and there is still a lot I love about it despite the Tories' best efforts to ruin the place, but the idea that this is objectively the best country in the world to live in is laughable.
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about ranking countries, which is subjective, but that's not remotely close to a hundred countries, so do you care to keep going or agree that "a hundred countries" better than the UK is ridiculous hyperbolic nonsense?
The UK is up there as one of the best, most developed countries to live in on almost any rational metric. As are most other west European nations, the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and Japan depending upon what you prefer.
All have their strengths and foibles, some more than others, but to suggest there's a hundred nations better than any of them is just absurd nonsense.
Yes I wouldn't say 100. Maybe 10-20? The UN's Human Development Index ranks the UK at #13 which seems about right although their precise ranking wouldn't be exactly the same as mine.
Personally - I think it's difficult to live in a country where you don't speak the language/can't communicate comfortably with most people. Japan is I am sure lovely, but I can't imagine enjoying moving there and spending probably multiple years unable to speak with most people beyond pointing and gesturing.
You'd pick it up in much less time with a little effort. Months.
... Objectively, Scandianiavia is IMO a nicer place (higher standard of living and on the whole fewer social strains)...
But the weather!
Seven months of winter, more in the far north.
If I moved overseas it would have to be to somewhere with nicer weather.
I knew a guy from a weather forum who moved to Norway specifically to experience the long snowy winters. He regularly posted pictures of feet and indeed metres of deep snow.
Wouldn't suit everyone!
I have a friend who was motivated to move to Manchester partly by the weather. He is from Newfoundland, and marvels constantly at how mild it is here.
Yes, where you come FROM is hugely important
I have a Finnish friend who used to delight in the amazing, glorious mildness of Cornish winters (and of course they are nice, compared to Finland). Then the rain started to get to her; she's back in Helsinki now, but still has a hankering for Falmouth
I have another Canadian friend who is also in Cornwall who still takes great joy in "the lack of insects". I had no idea this was such an issue in parts of Canada but apparently it is. She claims the summers are ruined by bugs and mosquitos and the rest - like Scotland's midges times ten (her words). And of course the winters are abysmal
It's hard for Brits to believe we might have "nicer" weather than somewhere else, but in limited cases it is true
We tend not to have extreme weather; which while lovely to admire must be horrid to live with. Being mostly temperate is a virtue for a country’s weather, just not an exciting one.
Comments
It will be interesting how those pictures of a group standing up eating and drinking ignoring social distancing is explained
Greens excellent
Lib Dems excellent
SNP well
Labour well
Conservatives poorly
That just ain’t good enough for Sarwar and Starmer. At this stage in the electoral cycle they ought to be utterly thrashing both the SNP and the Tories. I can understand that their activists and voters are disenchanted. And that the Greens and Lib Dems are doing so well must really piss them off.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Corbyn ultras were also enjoying the spectacle of Starmer's difficulties, as exemplified by Dianne Abbott's haste to jump on the bandwagon. Now they'll also be feeling sick, and facing the prospect of:
- Starmer actually emerging strengthened in the eyes of both the wider electorate and within the LP
- or going but with Rayner also out of the equation and the humiliation of some obscure far left candidate losing another Labour leadership election even more badly than Long-Bailey did.
I take the point that FPNs are normally for minor stuff. But now that they have been elevated into the fulcrum on which senior politicians' careers depends, it would be nice if we could get some consistency.
I've said it before - in numerous thread headers and below the line - that the way these laws were passed, with little or no scrutiny, at a moment's notice with confusing guidelines, with the police making stuff up and inconsistent and possibly unlawful enforcement has been an utter disgrace.
People dislike the substance of these laws and I can see why. But the process of law-making and transparency about how laws are interpreted and enforced also matter - for good reason - as we are seeing now.
Not that anyone in politics is making this point, as far as I can see. And so yet another important set of lessons will go unlearnt.
I can see that for him Sweden might be just perfect. Boring, safe, antisocial, sober, devoid of significant history apart from the Vikings, orderly, flat, sensible, bland, mainly terrible food.
But this is not a critique! There is a perfect place for everyone, which is as it should be
I once met a Spanish guy who lived in Greenland and loved it (I met him in Greenland). I asked him, incredulously: what about the winters?? He answered: Are you kidding, I love the winters, the winters are the best bit!
He adored the silence and the blackness and the way he described kayaking or sledging in the total dark... it did sound *almost* appealing
Chacun a son gout
You would be rich in India on a third of that, in Switzerland you'd be scraping by. Etc
(a) The Labour Two get cleared
(b) Boris gets slapped with another half-dozen FPNs
(c) Boris gets eviscerated by the Grey report and a stack of photos of him doing things there were no excuses for.
Back when it was "I think you should resign" he was just batting it away. But the ante has been upped. Starmer pledged to resign himself. But was then cleared. Of the stuff Johnson is being convicted of repeatedly.
Whilst I expect the PM and his lickspittles to keep spinning why he doesn't need to resign in this scenario, it does make the job harder.
Not quite warm enough much of the time, but Essex doesn't have as much rain as some other parts of the UK. Friendly place to live, too.
Still like our holiday trips, when we can, hospital appointments allowing! Wales if in UK, Canaries if out, or a family trip to Thailand. Sadly I've never managed to learn much Thai, although every so often I try.
Many nations do have special customs arrangements for territories like Northern Ireland which is a pene-exclave.
https://vote-2012.proboards.com/post/1239750/thread
The government saying you should do something as guidance is irrelevant to the Durham police .
Except that we do - the Mogg Gambit. Simply declare that the Oven_Ready Deal would be an "act of self-harm" and postpone indefinitely any inbound checks. Impose unilaterally that the EU set all the standards and we will obey them.
He has done both of those things. So the end game for a revised protocol is to formalise this: as we are aligned now and will remain aligned going forward with the EU setting our standards, there is no longer any need for export paperwork to ship GB to NI. Or GB to EU at all.
When the memo was leaked on Saturday, some thought that it cleared Labour because the meal itself was on the agenda, so it was itself work. What's interesting is the insistence of Labour that they continued to work after the meal. That Labour are pushing that line suggest that they think the meal does not count as work.
And that's why I mentioned social distancing. If the meal was simply to feed the workers, they shouldn't really have been stood around having a nice chat at close quarters.
Reading Lu Xun or Hong Lou Men (as everyone has to), or the Renmin Ri Bao might be slightly more demanding, reading Confucius and Laozi actually less so because the interpretation can be your own.
I accept that Ireland may have a border poll at sometime in the future as indeed may Scotland but the way to win over hearts and minds is to make the case for the union, not imprisonment against the elected will of those electorates
NEVER AGAIN.
There's a bit of related detail here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/gove-closes-tax-loophole-on-second-homes
The aim seems to be around making sure that 2nd homes are making a contribution to the local economy. I'm quite surprised it is as low as 70 days.
Now thanks to the Mail we can again look forward to the Sue Grey report without distraction
There is more at stake for ministers and shadow ministers - but not anywhere near as much as for party leaders. Even if you feel obliged to resign from the front bench, there is a route back (lots of people return after a short spell on the backbenches). For leaders, they are never likely to return to where they were.
Don't know anyone who's got it mind.
They will "send an Online form" to those not on DD.
No timescale for that. Again. No one has received it.
And it has all created a pathway for a united Ireland. People have differing views on this but again, not something that figured in the Conservative manifesto of 2019.
And all this you see as a tremendous victory. Not understanding, or refusing to, that Britain can withdraw from any agreement (for example the backstop) whenever it wants to (please refer to the EU and Brexit).
What is different from the backstop and the current situation? The UK (as was) could have exited the one and can still exit the other.
TBH, I think the police should have stayed out of all of this. All that was needed was the full Sue Grey report and the Inquiry about Johnson lying to parliament. This police angle is just clutter and distraction. It's taken things down the wrong road, muddied the waters, caused delay and confusion, allowed bad faith agendas to proliferate, and it's a waste of time and resource.
Currently listening to the new customs arrangements as a result of the UK leaving the EU. Not relevant to most of the burghers on Hartlepool, I'm guessing, so that's one up for Brexit.
Lots of plebs in Tory seats complaining about rich second home owners?
Create a bullshit law, that the MPs can cite to locals during their campaigns but has zero impact on the rich second home owners.
This government is actually excellent at political spin, just equally terrible about governing and creating useful law.
Just imagine their reaction is Boris had been filmed doing the same thing.
Tariffs and restrictions where they don't serve a purpose absolutely are an act of self-harm, but that is not a reason to remain aligned with the EU setting our standards.
We are free to set our own standards, while recognising the EU as a safe trading partner granting their standards equivalence to ours.
We would also be free to grant equivalence to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and any other trading partners we wish to do that with. Something we aren't able to do if we remain formally aligned with EU standards as you'd prefer.
That is the problem with the EU. The EEC began with the principle of equivalence, but the EU moved to the principle of harmonisation instead. We are rolling back the clock and going back to the superior principle of equivalence, which leaves us free to diverge as we choose - and only put in inspections if they are actually necessary and actually serve a purpose.
You listen and repeat.
When I began formal study I had no knowledge of what tone some very common words were. Even though I used them everyday in conversation.
Third is pretty obvious. It's much longer and down and up. Fourth brusque. But it doesn't matter half as much as folk think.
What makes this such a travesty for the UK when it is the case for Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands too?
Absolutely so long as the elected government can change it is what matters, which legally couldn't be done in the backstop, as there was in international law no unilateral exit from the backstop whereas there is from the Protocol.
I suspect that the new 'Send them to Rwanda' bill will prove a happy hunting ground for lawyers.
Incidentally, weren't the new Dr Who's parents granted asylum as refugees from persecution there?
So if Labour can demonstrate that
Work was happening
Food was taken in a socially distanced manner even if it included beer
All those who ate continued to work.
Then they should be OK.
Weak points
-Pubs were closed as people drinking couldn't be trusted to socially distance.
- How will they demonstrate social distancing - photos may show otherwise / capacity of room to curries ordered may show this was impossible
- There may be no evidence that some of those eating continued to work afterwards.
- If they didn't follow their own internal rules why not - who made the decision?
I think it is unfortunate for Labour that the birthday cake event was the first one announced and that it included Rishi. It seems to be a harsh interpretation of an event that was reported at the time in the Times, so is a retrospective fine.
If one of the more flagrant breaches was the first fine then people might be shrugging 'Beergate' off.
It isn't "should we remain aligned", it is "we are remaining aligned as government policy".
So bi is writing implement. Chyan is lead. Yuan dz modern.
So. Chyan bi = pencil. Yuan dz bi = biro.
2 favourites of mine.
"Fragrant stick" and "modern egg".
Can anyone guess?
I have no idea where those borders are btw but I'll of course take your word for it.
Plus you really don't understand the concept of sovereignty do you. We as a sovereign UK could and can exit any agreement we damn well want. Backstop, A16, NATO, you name it. Why we can even invade countries far away should we so decide. Do you actually understand what the sovereignty you rightly prize so highly actually means?
Labour's PR incompetence notwithstanding, the more I hear about this incident, the less interesting it gets.
But I'm glad you made it work for you anyway.
Where does he say we are remaining aligned as government policy, formally aligned, as opposed to recognising the EU as an equivalent so there's no need to do checks which is what he actually said?
https://twitter.com/AndrewPRLevi/status/1523947810521026561
Wouldn't suit everyone!
And also managing to avoid any focus on lying in parliament, which ultimately is the main reason for Boris' resignation.
Banana and atomic bomb.
What matters is that the voters get a say by voting for the government, and that the government can change the rules if the voters are unhappy.
Yes we could have violated the backstop by breaking international law and torn up the entire agreement, but to do so is illegal under international law and would be bad faith and opposed by plenty here including no doubt yourself.
The difference with the Protocol over the Backstop is it not just got GB out of it and merely special arrangements for our pene-exclave in NI, but it gave us a LEGAL exit from the special arrangements too, if we choose to invoke it. That is infinitely superior to only having illegal solutions don't you think?
Its an absurd situation. We have imposed one-way costs on ourselves.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/09/emmanuel-macron-calls-new-european-political-community-britain/
Looks like someone’s got a new job title.
https://twitter.com/patrick_kidd/status/1523965842505019394
Invoking a provision of the Protocol doesn't break the Treaty, it is part and parcel of the Treaty.
And NI has a stupid PR voting, just like Germany does themselves. The DUP and other parties won the right to be in the NI Government at the election thanks to the stupid PR voting system they have, so they didn't lose the election.
Funny how so many people normally keen on PR want to apply FPTP principles to Northern Ireland right now, isn't it?
Does Bart mean the colonies and dependencies? France maybe, but do they really count as "internal"? Spain only has Ceuta and Melilla. Germany has nothing of the sort, not even a San Marino (which is in the Single Market anyway)
Poor social distancing at an event he attended is only Starmer's responsibility at an oversight level and is not at all an issue for the Durham Police.
It isn't absurd, we have dropped the one-way costs. They're the ones imposing costs on themselves.
Economics shows that tariffs and similar barriers are a cost to the nation imposing the cost. They're imposing costs by having unnecessary checks on nations with equivalent standards, a stupidity we had to follow if we were members - and a stupidity we would have to restart following if we formalised alignment.
Recognising developed nations as having equivalence is cutting costs, not adding them or ceding standards. We should do so with other developed nations too.
Ditto sounding like a Seoulite, rather than a Busan fisherman.
The alphabet is also dead easy to learn - if you already speak Korean.
A lot of this is perception and treating everyone the same. What happened in Durham isn't exactly skullduggery but that's not the point - we all suffered and had to do and avoid doing ridiculously simple things in the name of false god Lockdown, Starmer and especially the number 10 party crew seem to think being in politics means the rules weren't really meant for them. That is what's really pissing people off.
Starner simply shouldn't have been having a beer and nosh with pals indoors. In any circumstance. And his insistence that this was just how they did it on the campaign trail means he doesnt 'get it' - if you're Mr integrity you fall over yourself to suffer like everyone else you voted to make miserable.
The whole thing is lunacy, but lockdown was lunacy so it fits.
I have a Finnish friend who used to delight in the amazing, glorious mildness of Cornish winters (and of course they are nice, compared to Finland). Then the rain started to get to her; she's back in Helsinki now, but still has a hankering for Falmouth
I have another Canadian friend who is also in Cornwall who still takes great joy in "the lack of insects". I had no idea this was such an issue in parts of Canada but apparently it is. She claims the summers are ruined by bugs and mosquitos and the rest - like Scotland's midges times ten (her words). And of course the winters are abysmal
It's hard for Brits to believe we might have "nicer" weather than somewhere else, but in limited cases it is true
Labour then has to have a leader who at least self-identifies as a women. Probably Ed Miliband in a dress. Rachel Reeves.
The Tories then have to oust Boris. Electorally toxic to try and plough on. The LE losses were at the very top end of what was thought possible (when you ignore the blatant expectation management of 500). That doesn't change in two years.
So facing the new Labour leader, Tories will also go for a woman. After a lot of faffing about, the members get to choose between Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt. Which Mordaunt wins handily.
It gets him on the front pages, and unless he gets fined, that's a net positive, I think. Only the most partisan who are never going to vote for him anyway will be impressed by the Mail's stream of self contradictory ordure.