He knows the Durham Police do not issue COVID FPNs retrospectively.
They said on Cummings" In line with Durham Constabulary’s general approach throughout the pandemic, there is no intention to take retrospective action in respect of the Barnard Castle incident since this would amount to treating Mr Cummings differently from other members of the public. Durham Constabulary has not taken retrospective action against any other person"..
SKS has set the bar so high that even if Durham Police find he broke the rules he will survive because he knows their policy re retrospective fines
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.
Wasn't squirrel anus bleacher one of the professions of a certain multi faceted PBer? Perhaps just a hobby on reflection.
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
In Maine (which is essentially Canada) the midge-on-steroids Black Fly season is horrific. I came out in bites through a deet-soaked hat that came up the size of hen's eggs.
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.
Perhaps he means Switzerland?! But that doesn't count
*confuzzled*
I cannot think of a single internal customs border inside Germany. Or anywhere in the EU in fact. Isn't that the point of the Single Market? But maybe I am missing the enormous wood because of a few trees
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?
The NI government system is not a function of STV or PR or even FPTP. It was setup as a powersharing government (i forget the technical name) to include all shades of opinion.
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)
Yes most of the internal ones are overseas, just as Northern Ireland is, but yes they are internal. Just as Northern Ireland is a pene-exclave of Ireland, most of the other countries territories with splits are becuase of exclaves or pene-exclaves.
France absolutely includes its overseas territories as a part of France and they vote in the national elections etc just like Northern Ireland do but they're not within the French/EU customs borders.
Germany: The island of Heligoland and the territory of Büsingen (an exclave of the Switzerlands).
Italy: Livigno (not even an exclave, but its still a split and even has a manned customs checkpoint)
Spain: Ceuta and Melilla (pene-exclaves of Morocco).
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?
Rubbish. If you prefer we can break them in limited and specific ways. The point being that we can break them if they don't suit us. No treaty, under whatever terms or conditions it is imposed, can bind a sovereign nation to do something it doesn't want to do.
Had we chosen to go with the backstop it would be because a democratically-elected government chose to do so. As it turned out, we elected a government that imposed a border within our own country - something that you are entirely comfortable with. I find that strange, in particular because it was something that people, including the government itself, hitherto thought the government would or could (politically) never do.
And it did it. And you applaud it. Which as I say I find extraordinary given that as we didn't want to do it, it constitutes arguably the biggest infringement on our "sovereignty" for many decades.
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.
I think we can all agree that putting arbitrary power to make decisions of great importance for any individual's future in the hands of the Met is not a fantastic idea. And the idea that they might be consistent and transparent in such an endeavour is patently absurd.
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)
The overseas parts of France and the Netherlands are definitely part of them, so internal definitely applies. I assume the reference to Spain is to the Canary Islands, and I had to look up the German and Italian ones, which are exclaves within Switzerland apparently.
He knows the Durham Police do not issue COVID FPNs retrospectively.
They said on Cummings" In line with Durham Constabulary’s general approach throughout the pandemic, there is no intention to take retrospective action in respect of the Barnard Castle incident since this would amount to treating Mr Cummings differently from other members of the public. Durham Constabulary has not taken retrospective action against any other person"..
SKS has set the bar so high that even if Durham Police find he broke the rules he will survive because he knows their policy re retrospective fines
Nobody buys the integrity bullshit. It does highlight Johnsons complete absence of it of course. But then, we knew that already.
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.
Korean I found completely impenetrable when I have been there. At least in Japan you have a bit of Kanji to help but Korea there's no way in unless you know the language. Which I suppose is the same if you look at Chinese characters for the first time although some are exquisitely logical in terms of what the pictograms represent.
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.
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.
Agreed, yet do you believe it would all be over right now if Starmer was PM? Or would we still be limping on like Italy and a few other European countries too afraid to let go.
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.
Last month I was in Tennessee and staying at some nice tiny hotel and the owner took me kayaking and said Good job we're doing this now, there's a storm coming
I said Ooh, I like storms
He looked at me with puzzled alarm. Then I realised, Of course a storm in Tennessee can be anything up to a tornado, and it can kill people, and even more often it can seriously damage property. They're not welcome and not enjoyable
The storm duly arrived and to me it seemed fairly dramatic and impressive but they all laughed and said it was just a spot of rain in the end, barely a storm at all
Yesterday she received a clinical negligence payout of a substantial amount but would much rather have not been turned into a Paraplegic at the age of 55
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.
Gardo would definitely been throwing shapes and properly largin' it.
Do you think that you can hang tough when the rhythm gets ruff and the djay says he thinks you've had enuff?
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.
I think we can all agree that putting arbitrary power to make decisions of great importance for any individual's future in the hands of the Met is not a fantastic idea. And the idea that they might be consistent and transparent in such an endeavour is patently absurd.
Ah well if SKS or Johnson or both lose their jobs as a result then maybe they can reflect on it as karma for criminalizing having a coffee on a park bench and keeping people from their loved ones.
He knows the Durham Police do not issue COVID FPNs retrospectively.
They said on Cummings" In line with Durham Constabulary’s general approach throughout the pandemic, there is no intention to take retrospective action in respect of the Barnard Castle incident since this would amount to treating Mr Cummings differently from other members of the public. Durham Constabulary has not taken retrospective action against any other person"..
SKS has set the bar so high that even if Durham Police find he broke the rules he will survive because he knows their policy re retrospective fines
Nobody buys the integrity bullshit. It does highlight Johnsons complete absence of it of course. But then, we knew that already.
Plenty on here fell for it hook line and sinker mate.
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?
Rubbish. If you prefer we can break them in limited and specific ways. The point being that we can break them if they don't suit us. No treaty, under whatever terms or conditions it is imposed, can bind a sovereign nation to do something it doesn't want to do.
Had we chosen to go with the backstop it would be because a democratically-elected government chose to do so. As it turned out, we elected a government that imposed a border within our own country - something that you are entirely comfortable with. I find that strange, in particular because it was something that people, including the government itself, hitherto thought the government would or could (politically) never do.
And it did it. And you applaud it. Which as I say I find extraordinary given that as we didn't want to do it, it constitutes arguably the biggest infringement on our "sovereignty" for many decades.
Or it would, had our Government ever had any intention of honouring the agreement that created it….
Yesterday she received a clinical negligence payout of a substantial amount but would much rather have not been turned into a Paraplegic at the age of 55
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.
I will be generous and assume you don't know. Because we have dropped the checks inbound to the UK the only checks and costa are outbound to the EU. "They" aren't imposing costs on themselves. The costs are on the UK, not the EU. And they were imposed by us in the oven-ready deal.
He knows the Durham Police do not issue COVID FPNs retrospectively.
They said on Cummings" In line with Durham Constabulary’s general approach throughout the pandemic, there is no intention to take retrospective action in respect of the Barnard Castle incident since this would amount to treating Mr Cummings differently from other members of the public. Durham Constabulary has not taken retrospective action against any other person"..
SKS has set the bar so high that even if Durham Police find he broke the rules he will survive because he knows their policy re retrospective fines
Nobody buys the integrity bullshit. It does highlight Johnsons complete absence of it of course. But then, we knew that already.
Plenty on here fell for it hook line and sinker mate.
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.
I think we can all agree that putting arbitrary power to make decisions of great importance for any individual's future in the hands of the Met is not a fantastic idea. And the idea that they might be consistent and transparent in such an endeavour is patently absurd.
It seems to me that the worst of the language in that laws was the concept of a “reasonable excuse”. Fine in something that will go to trial. Dreadful when it’s in plod’s discretion.
Yesterday she received a clinical negligence payout of a substantial amount but would much rather have not been turned into a Paraplegic at the age of 55
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.
Korean I found completely impenetrable when I have been there. At least in Japan you have a bit of Kanji to help but Korea there's no way in unless you know the language. Which I suppose is the same if you look at Chinese characters for the first time although some are exquisitely logical in terms of what the pictograms represent.
It's said to take an illiterate adult a day to learn, if you speak Korean; two if you're an idiot. Took me a fortnight...
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)
The overseas parts of France and the Netherlands are definitely part of them, so internal definitely applies. I assume the reference to Spain is to the Canary Islands, and I had to look up the German and Italian ones, which are exclaves within Switzerland apparently.
Aren't the Canaries fully part of Metro Spain and the Single market?
I believe the overseas departments of France - Mayotte, Reunion, &c - are also completely integrated?
Yesterday she received a clinical negligence payout of a substantial amount but would much rather have not been turned into a Paraplegic at the age of 55
Have fun
Bloody hell very sorry to hear that.
Yep no more walking, passing water without a catheter, having a poo without a nurses hand manually evacuating you, no bonking no gardening, swimming or anything she used to do
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.
I will be generous and assume you don't know. Because we have dropped the checks inbound to the UK the only checks and costa are outbound to the EU. "They" aren't imposing costs on themselves. The costs are on the UK, not the EU. And they were imposed by us in the oven-ready deal.
Sorry but you're falling for a protectionist fallacy. As I said tariffs and similar barriers are a cost to the nation imposing the costs.
Inbound costs are the self-imposed one-way costs.
Dropping inbound to the UK costs means we have abolished the costs on ourselves. We should drop such unnecessary costs on other nations we recognise equivalence with around the globe.
If the EU are imposing inbound checks and costs, then they are imposing the costs upon themselves, not on the UK. Protectionism is a failure.
Inflicting a full-scale trade war on voters already going through a cost-of-living crisis by reneging on an international treaty you sold as an oven-ready, cost-free triumph, may not be the smartest politics. The neanderthal, English nationalist, Tory base is not big enough.
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.
I think we can all agree that putting arbitrary power to make decisions of great importance for any individual's future in the hands of the Met is not a fantastic idea. And the idea that they might be consistent and transparent in such an endeavour is patently absurd.
Ah well if SKS or Johnson or both lose their jobs as a result then maybe they can reflect on it as karma for criminalizing having a coffee on a park bench and keeping people from their loved ones.
Can't really disagree with that. But I'd be very surprised if the Bullingdon Barnacle does.
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.
This line sums up the situation perfectly "Starmer simply shouldn't have been having a beer and nosh with pals indoors. In any circumstance"
Yesterday she received a clinical negligence payout of a substantial amount but would much rather have not been turned into a Paraplegic at the age of 55
Have fun
Bloody hell very sorry to hear that.
Yep no more walking, passing water without a catheter, having a poo without a nurses hand manually evacuating you, no bonking no gardening, swimming or anything she used to do
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.
I will be generous and assume you don't know. Because we have dropped the checks inbound to the UK the only checks and costa are outbound to the EU. "They" aren't imposing costs on themselves. The costs are on the UK, not the EU. And they were imposed by us in the oven-ready deal.
Sorry but you're falling for a protectionist fallacy. As I said tariffs and similar barriers are a cost to the nation imposing the costs.
Inbound costs are the self-imposed one-way costs.
Dropping inbound to the UK costs means we have abolished the costs on ourselves. We should drop such unnecessary costs on other nations we recognise equivalence with around the globe.
If the EU are imposing inbound checks and costs, then they are imposing the costs upon themselves, not on the UK. Protectionism is a failure.
So costs only on UK businesses exporting to the UK is the EU imposing costs on EU businesses? Its an opinion...
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.
I will be generous and assume you don't know. Because we have dropped the checks inbound to the UK the only checks and costa are outbound to the EU. "They" aren't imposing costs on themselves. The costs are on the UK, not the EU. And they were imposed by us in the oven-ready deal.
Sorry but you're falling for a protectionist fallacy. As I said tariffs and similar barriers are a cost to the nation imposing the costs.
Inbound costs are the self-imposed one-way costs.
Dropping inbound to the UK costs means we have abolished the costs on ourselves. We should drop such unnecessary costs on other nations we recognise equivalence with around the globe.
If the EU are imposing inbound checks and costs, then they are imposing the costs upon themselves, not on the UK. Protectionism is a failure.
So costs only on UK businesses exporting to the UK is the EU imposing costs on EU businesses? Its an opinion...
You’re both right. The cost gets passed on to the European consumer in whole or in part, but they might then decide not to keep buying the product. Depends how replaceable it is.
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.
Chinese writing system has been made massively easier by computers and input systems. It becomes a problem of recognition rather than recall. No-one handwrites any more, unless it's for an exam.
The tricky bit, in contrast to most languages, in in comprehending speech. There are very few sounds in modern Chinese - a total of 400 distinct syllables, excluding tonal inflections, and many of those sound similar: ji, qi, xi, si, zi, ci, shi, zhi, chi, she, che, zhe and so on.
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.
I will be generous and assume you don't know. Because we have dropped the checks inbound to the UK the only checks and costa are outbound to the EU. "They" aren't imposing costs on themselves. The costs are on the UK, not the EU. And they were imposed by us in the oven-ready deal.
Sorry but you're falling for a protectionist fallacy. As I said tariffs and similar barriers are a cost to the nation imposing the costs.
Inbound costs are the self-imposed one-way costs.
Dropping inbound to the UK costs means we have abolished the costs on ourselves. We should drop such unnecessary costs on other nations we recognise equivalence with around the globe.
If the EU are imposing inbound checks and costs, then they are imposing the costs upon themselves, not on the UK. Protectionism is a failure.
So costs only on UK businesses exporting to the UK is the EU imposing costs on EU businesses? Its an opinion...
Its not just a view, it is Ricardian Economics yes. Tariffs/protectionism etc are a form of self-harm.
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?
The DUP did a TMay - they called an unnecessary election in which they lost their pole position.
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.
I think we can all agree that putting arbitrary power to make decisions of great importance for any individual's future in the hands of the Met is not a fantastic idea. And the idea that they might be consistent and transparent in such an endeavour is patently absurd.
Ah well if SKS or Johnson or both lose their jobs as a result then maybe they can reflect on it as karma for criminalizing having a coffee on a park bench and keeping people from their loved ones.
And who drew up those rules, and advertised them on TV almost every night ?
Now that we have the Delingpole family and various other Northern working-class radicals holding Prime Minister Starmer to account, press attention will be focused on accountability for the top of the structure, as it would be in any other well-functioning democracy, of course.
Mike, give it a rest with the Sir Keir can walk on Water stuff. Beer/Party gate won't shift that many votes. The Red Wall have already made their minds up about Starmer that he is a posh Metropolitan Wally who tried to reverse their referendum vote from 2016 Boris and the Tories are losing support across the country but the gravity is not shifting towards Labour I feel we are rather in 2001-2005 territory when the Tories made gains but not enough to beat Blair at the General Election. My hunch feeling is that the Tories will garner enough seats to govern as a minority in 2024 possibly with DUP support. Starmer will not be prime minister.
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)
The overseas parts of France and the Netherlands are definitely part of them, so internal definitely applies. I assume the reference to Spain is to the Canary Islands, and I had to look up the German and Italian ones, which are exclaves within Switzerland apparently.
Aren't the Canaries fully part of Metro Spain and the Single market?
I believe the overseas departments of France - Mayotte, Reunion, &c - are also completely integrated?
Apart from the German exclave in Switzerland (population 1500) which has been in a customs union with Switzerland for decades), there is also Heligoland (population 1300) which is outside the EU customs union because it has tax-free status. I don't think anyone thinks that Germany is a country "split by internal customs borders".
More politicians for Wales - 36 extra MSs. 16 constituencies with 6 members each.
- The Senedd should have 96 members
- It should be elected using party lists with mandatory gender quotes and "zipping", which requires parties alternate between women and men on candidate lists
- Seats should be allocated using the D'Hondt formula - which is currently used to make the Senedd better represent how people voted through the election of regional candidates
The most astonishing thing about the whole tedious partygate/beergate saga is the fact that several PBers are still, apparently, incapable of correctly spelling the names of Sue Gray and Angela Rayner. There's been good progress on Keir, though.
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.
I will be generous and assume you don't know. Because we have dropped the checks inbound to the UK the only checks and costa are outbound to the EU. "They" aren't imposing costs on themselves. The costs are on the UK, not the EU. And they were imposed by us in the oven-ready deal.
Sorry but you're falling for a protectionist fallacy. As I said tariffs and similar barriers are a cost to the nation imposing the costs.
Inbound costs are the self-imposed one-way costs.
Dropping inbound to the UK costs means we have abolished the costs on ourselves. We should drop such unnecessary costs on other nations we recognise equivalence with around the globe.
If the EU are imposing inbound checks and costs, then they are imposing the costs upon themselves, not on the UK. Protectionism is a failure.
So costs only on UK businesses exporting to the UK is the EU imposing costs on EU businesses? Its an opinion...
Its not just a view, it is Ricardian Economics yes. Tariffs/protectionism etc are a form of self-harm.
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.
I will be generous and assume you don't know. Because we have dropped the checks inbound to the UK the only checks and costa are outbound to the EU. "They" aren't imposing costs on themselves. The costs are on the UK, not the EU. And they were imposed by us in the oven-ready deal.
Sorry but you're falling for a protectionist fallacy. As I said tariffs and similar barriers are a cost to the nation imposing the costs.
Inbound costs are the self-imposed one-way costs.
Dropping inbound to the UK costs means we have abolished the costs on ourselves. We should drop such unnecessary costs on other nations we recognise equivalence with around the globe.
If the EU are imposing inbound checks and costs, then they are imposing the costs upon themselves, not on the UK. Protectionism is a failure.
So costs only on UK businesses exporting to the UK is the EU imposing costs on EU businesses? Its an opinion...
You’re both right. The cost gets passed on to the European consumer in whole or in part, but they might then decide not to keep buying the product. Depends how replaceable it is.
Think EU companies are exporting less to the UK because it's become a less interesting market to them. Longer term the UK is a less interesting market to invest in. That's the real problem for the UK.
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.
Yep. That was the considered opinion of Bolton's Iranians. Boring weather. But not physically painful, nor potentially life-threatening.
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.
I will be generous and assume you don't know. Because we have dropped the checks inbound to the UK the only checks and costa are outbound to the EU. "They" aren't imposing costs on themselves. The costs are on the UK, not the EU. And they were imposed by us in the oven-ready deal.
Sorry but you're falling for a protectionist fallacy. As I said tariffs and similar barriers are a cost to the nation imposing the costs.
Inbound costs are the self-imposed one-way costs.
Dropping inbound to the UK costs means we have abolished the costs on ourselves. We should drop such unnecessary costs on other nations we recognise equivalence with around the globe.
If the EU are imposing inbound checks and costs, then they are imposing the costs upon themselves, not on the UK. Protectionism is a failure.
So costs only on UK businesses exporting to the UK is the EU imposing costs on EU businesses? Its an opinion...
Its not just a view, it is Ricardian Economics yes. Tariffs/protectionism etc are a form of self-harm.
It's imposing costs on EU customers.
Naah. They can mostly buy the same stuff cheaper from the other EU countries. Politically its also a mind-boggling argument. As UK businesses detail how they are at a huge competitive disadvantage, people tell them actually its the other way round actually.
Mike, give it a rest with the Sir Keir can walk on Water stuff. Beer/Party gate won't shift that many votes. The Red Wall have already made their minds up about Starmer that he is a posh Metropolitan Wally who tried to reverse their referendum vote from 2016 Boris and the Tories are losing support across the country but the gravity is not shifting towards Labour I feel we are rather in 2001-2005 territory when the Tories made gains but not enough to beat Blair at the General Election. My hunch feeling is that the Tories will garner enough seats to govern as a minority in 2024 possibly with DUP support. Starmer will not be prime minister.
Substitute "xxxxx5" for "The Red Wall" and I think you're spot on.
On May 10, the Lithuanian Seimas unanimously recognized Russia as a terrorist state, stating the Kremlin regime seeks to destroy the Ukrainian nation — such actions should be recognized as genocide, and Russia is a state that supports and commits terrorism https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1523975600008052737
The most astonishing thing about the whole tedious partygate/beergate saga is the fact that several PBers are still, apparently, incapable of correctly spelling the names of Sue Gray and Angela Rayner. There's been good progress on Keir, though.
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)
The overseas parts of France and the Netherlands are definitely part of them, so internal definitely applies. I assume the reference to Spain is to the Canary Islands, and I had to look up the German and Italian ones, which are exclaves within Switzerland apparently.
Aren't the Canaries fully part of Metro Spain and the Single market?
I believe the overseas departments of France - Mayotte, Reunion, &c - are also completely integrated?
Apart from the German exclave in Switzerland (population 1500) which has been in a customs union with Switzerland for decades), there is also Heligoland (population 1300) which is outside the EU customs union because it has tax-free status. I don't think anyone thinks that Germany is a country "split by internal customs borders".
Didn't know that about Heligoland. I love the intricacy and quirkiness of Europe, these tiny anomalies everywhere. Brilliant
I once heard Cimbrian German spoken in the Dolomites - a peculiar sing-song mix of medieval German and Italian (apparently). Really unusual. Only 2000 speakers, max, so I got lucky
There is something wonderfully backwards about the State Opening of Parliament. It looks glorious but objectively almost every single part of it demonstrates just how medieval our political structures are.
There is something wonderfully backwards about the State Opening of Parliament. It looks glorious but objectively almost every single part of it demonstrates just how medieval our political structures are.
I really enjoy the commentary about National Insurance increases and benefits uprating juxtaposed with Charles' golden throne.
There is something wonderfully backwards about the State Opening of Parliament. It looks glorious but objectively almost every single part of it demonstrates just how medieval our political structures are.
I really enjoy the commentary about National Insurance increases and benefits uprating juxtaposed with Charles' golden throne.
I just love the idea of seeing the PM’s face if the monarch starts saying their own words.
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)
The overseas parts of France and the Netherlands are definitely part of them, so internal definitely applies. I assume the reference to Spain is to the Canary Islands, and I had to look up the German and Italian ones, which are exclaves within Switzerland apparently.
Aren't the Canaries fully part of Metro Spain and the Single market?
I believe the overseas departments of France - Mayotte, Reunion, &c - are also completely integrated?
There is something wonderfully backwards about the State Opening of Parliament. It looks glorious but objectively almost every single part of it demonstrates just how medieval our political structures are.
I really enjoy the commentary about National Insurance increases and benefits uprating juxtaposed with Charles' golden throne.
We've only had King Gobshite for 5 minutes and already the 'mort aux rois' sentiment is positively feverish.
There is something wonderfully backwards about the State Opening of Parliament. It looks glorious but objectively almost every single part of it demonstrates just how medieval our political structures are.
I really enjoy the commentary about National Insurance increases and benefits uprating juxtaposed with Charles' golden throne.
The whole thing is objectively preposterous. The costumes. The gilding. The summoning of plebs to the house of peers. The mace.
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.
Yes to all that. Which is why I said Chinese is much easier. It doesn't have the complexity of tense, gender or inflection. And is SVO, so comes out instinctively in the right order to an English speaker. As well as a tiny vocabulary. And that most people were taught it not as a first language. So are able to correct you. And do. Repeatedly. Learning to read is a whole other level. And writing a lifelong prospect for most.
I doubt very much I would get to any reasonable level in Japanese in months . I've lived in French-speaking countries and definitely my French improved from rusty A-level to something like B2 level according to my language teacher, but still wasn't at the level required where I could really work properly/be my usual amusing witty charming persona.
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)
The overseas parts of France and the Netherlands are definitely part of them, so internal definitely applies. I assume the reference to Spain is to the Canary Islands, and I had to look up the German and Italian ones, which are exclaves within Switzerland apparently.
Aren't the Canaries fully part of Metro Spain and the Single market?
I believe the overseas departments of France - Mayotte, Reunion, &c - are also completely integrated?
The Canaries are outside the EU VAT area.
Again, I didn't know that. In which case I wholly accept that @BartholomewRoberts has a point
He said the building, located at the foot of a mountain on a site once used by the Japanese during their 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, was a “symbol of imperial power” that would be opened to the public as a sign of his commitment to a more open and democratic presidency. Successive South Korean presidents have lived and worked there since the country became a republic in 1948.
The gesture has not been well received, however. His predecessor, Moon Jae-in, criticised the move as hasty and a potential security threat, while even some of his conservative supporters questioned the decision – estimated to have cost $40m – at a time when Yoon should be focusing on the economy and North Korea.
Yoon, 61, has been forced to deny that he and his wife had decided to live elsewhere on the advice of shamanistic healers, whose shady role in South Korean politics became an issue during the election campaign...
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.
The writing system is definitely not impractical. It's more concise than a phonetic system and faster to read.
People continue to refer to SKS being "posh" (he's not) as a reason to vote for Boris (he is). It's most odd.
SKS has committed the unforgivable crime of not Knowing His Place. This kind of social mobility would be celebrated in most countries but in Britain (and especially England) leaves large parts of both the class he left and the class he entered deeply resentful.
Traditionally he (inheriting the Lord Chancellor's role) is the one who should be doing the speech today, not Prince Charles.
The "tradition" referred to here is referring back to when Charles was too young to do the speech, though, isn't it?
Not just then, going back centuries it was the Lord Chancellor who'd do it if the Monarch didn't.
QEII is relatively unusual in having given the speech herself so many times, Queen Victoria only gave the speech seven times between 1866 and her death in 1901.
And this remains the problem. The disconnect between the London based Remain supporting media and the voter in Hartlepool, Wakefield, Mansfield grows ever larger. Whilst Remainers on this site were getting angry about Partygate fulled by Brexit - voters in the Red Wall have mocked Keir for taking the knee to BLM and I've heard some very uncomplimentary comments about his deputy. I always remember John Cole once describing the 1992 general election as the media saying a Labour government, the people saying a Tory one - history likely to repeat it's self in 2024. Starmer is Kinnock.
Kevin wants the Queen, 96, to be turfed out of her gaff and sent to Weston Super Mare
On the other hand, selfish monarchists want a frail, 96 y.o. to continue working till she drops, with no prospect of a quiet retirement to put her feet up!
He knows the Durham Police do not issue COVID FPNs retrospectively.
They said on Cummings" In line with Durham Constabulary’s general approach throughout the pandemic, there is no intention to take retrospective action in respect of the Barnard Castle incident since this would amount to treating Mr Cummings differently from other members of the public. Durham Constabulary has not taken retrospective action against any other person"..
SKS has set the bar so high that even if Durham Police find he broke the rules he will survive because he knows their policy re retrospective fines
The Met didn't issue COVID FPNs retrospectively until they did.
People continue to refer to SKS being "posh" (he's not) as a reason to vote for Boris (he is). It's most odd.
Only kind of. Lots of the country don't like people from a normal background being both aspiring and successful, but don't mind people born into wealth and success. I think that has been the case for many decades and once that is understood, then there is nothing odd about Boris being more accepted than Keir.
Having travelled quite a bit, I wouldn’t say the UK is an angrier country than anywhere else. We’re certainly divided and we have our problems, but overall we’re a pretty typical western European country, with additional soft power acquired over a long period if time.
In fact, I’d argue we are maybe a bit too complacent, especially in the face of a government that very clearly has no regard for our established Parliamentary democracy or the rule of law. We are the country of “mustn’t grumble” and “it could be worse”. That gives chancers and rogues like the current PM all the scope they need to do their worst.
It would be nice to think that Starmer and Rayner doing what they’ve done might shine more of a contrasting light on Downing Street, but I doubt it.
how is having a mass work gathering and beer and curry in anyway virtuous given what the law at the time was trying to prevent and Starmer fully supported ?
The rules were quite different in April 2021 to April 2020. By April 2021 half the population had been vaccinated for example.
Indeed though its funny how many people are saying that about Starmer's drinking session that he attended, but how few people were saying that when the drinking session that Downing Street staff had 'on the eve of Prince Philip's funeral' came out.
The latter was also April 2021.
Understood. When Downing Street staff were on the smash (literally) they were in fact finalising arrangements for Prince Philip's funeral a few hours later. Thanks for clearing that up.
I never said that.
What I did say when the Downing Street allegations came out was that the PM should go.
What you say when the Keir Starmer allegations came out for the same time as the Downing Street ones is "but the timing is different".
I'm guessing the exact date on April 2021 must matter seriously to you?
I have posted repeatedly that if this campaign event broke the law then ALL of the campaign events broke the law. Is anyone saying this was Starmer's only campaign event in 2021? Or that Johnson didn't do any? There are stacks of them the Mail could go after, and yet there is absolute silence. When multiple crimes looks worse than a single crime. Nothing written.
Why?
Because the Mail knows this is crap. So focus on micro details to create the air of scandal. Because if they throw this open to "campaigning like this was illegal" it quickly gets shown that it was legal.
As for the Downing Street pissup before Phil's funeral, are you saying that was a campaign event? Because the exemptions for campaigning is the relevant part of the law in this case. You are - once again - saying the law was the same for all things at all times. Which you know as well as I do isn't true.
Yet like the Mail you post it anyway. Writing it. Knowing it to be factually wrong and logically incoherent.
Exemptions for campaigning are not the relevant part of the law in this case, because the allegation isn't about campaigning it is about having a piss up after work.
Yes Starmer was allowed to campaign, nobody disputes that. But guess what, by your same logic the Downing Street staff were entitled to go to work in Downing Street because they were covered by the exemption too. They were working.
The allegation for both are comparable. That they were working earlier in the day, but then it became a drinking session afterwards. The afterwards bit is what the allegation is about, not what they were doing earlier in the day.
If Starmer and others were allowed to have food and get pissed with colleagues because he was working earlier in the day, then why weren't Downing Street staff allowed to get pissed with colleagues because they were working earlier in the day?
The Labour Party's version is that they were working* and coincidentally consumed food and drink. To my untrained eye, that is the key point. If they were working then it was legal to be there and other things they did at the same time have limited relevance.The Downing St things were about stopping work and gathering for cake, including Carrie and, for the other events, for a clearly post-work social.
Currygate is going to be harder to pin down, even if there was an element of taking the piss, because it was legitimate for people not employed to be there, so working out whether anyone was there improperly is harder and because the definition of campaigning is looser than the definition of being there for paid employment. Sitting there with a beer chatting about doorstep feedback could potentially fall under allowable activity.
Currygate all hinges on witness testimony, I guess - how people actually present saw it.
*or engaged in an activity that constituted a reasonable excuse, such as campaigning.
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.
I think we can all agree that putting arbitrary power to make decisions of great importance for any individual's future in the hands of the Met is not a fantastic idea. And the idea that they might be consistent and transparent in such an endeavour is patently absurd.
Ah well if SKS or Johnson or both lose their jobs as a result then maybe they can reflect on it as karma for criminalizing having a coffee on a park bench and keeping people from their loved ones.
And who drew up those rules, and advertised them on TV almost every night ?
Now that we have the Delingpole family and various other Northern working-class radicals holding Prime Minister Starmer to account, press attention will be focused on accountability for the top of the structure, as it would be in any other well-functioning democracy, of course.
The government with support from the opposition who wanted more, harder, sooner for longer. SKS doesn't get a pass as some innocent bystander to a dictatorship. He was an enthusiastic lockdown zealot
Having travelled quite a bit, I wouldn’t say the UK is an angrier country than anywhere else. We’re certainly divided and we have our problems, but overall we’re a pretty typical western European country, with additional soft power acquired over a long period if time.
In fact, I’d argue we are maybe a bit too complacent, especially in the face of a government that very clearly has no regard for our established Parliamentary democracy or the rule of law. We are the country of “mustn’t grumble” and “it could be worse”. That gives chancers and rogues like the current PM all the scope they need to do their worst.
It would be nice to think that Starmer and Rayner doing what they’ve done might shine more of a contrasting light on Downing Street, but I doubt it.
how is having a mass work gathering and beer and curry in anyway virtuous given what the law at the time was trying to prevent and Starmer fully supported ?
The rules were quite different in April 2021 to April 2020. By April 2021 half the population had been vaccinated for example.
Indeed though its funny how many people are saying that about Starmer's drinking session that he attended, but how few people were saying that when the drinking session that Downing Street staff had 'on the eve of Prince Philip's funeral' came out.
The latter was also April 2021.
To be fair, Mr R, I don't think that the general picture of Starmer's session ..... small plate of curry and a bottle of beer in a meeting hall...., is anything like the relaxed cheese and wine party in the garden of No 10 which is the picture we have of the at least one of the PM's sessions.
One is mixing with food and alcohol indoors, the other is mixing with food and alcohol outdoors.
You're right, considering that meeting indoors was considered worse than meeting outdoors because the transmission is worse indoors than outdoors, I'm guessing you're saying Starmer's is worse?
Or have you got something against cheese? Or do you just prefer beer over wine?
One has been proven to have been against the law and one has still to be shown as to whether it was inside or out of the law, huge difference
There is something wonderfully backwards about the State Opening of Parliament. It looks glorious but objectively almost every single part of it demonstrates just how medieval our political structures are.
I really enjoy the commentary about National Insurance increases and benefits uprating juxtaposed with Charles' golden throne.
We've only had King Gobshite for 5 minutes and already the 'mort aux rois' sentiment is positively feverish.
He can save his reign if he adds an even more sarcastic tone to each speech. The occasional raised eyebrow when planning changes are announced.
Comments
He knows the Durham Police do not issue COVID FPNs retrospectively.
They said on Cummings" In line with Durham Constabulary’s general approach throughout the pandemic, there is no intention to take retrospective action in respect of the Barnard Castle incident since this would amount to treating Mr Cummings differently from other members of the public. Durham Constabulary has not taken retrospective action against any other person"..
SKS has set the bar so high that even if Durham Police find he broke the rules he will survive because he knows their policy re retrospective fines
Also a great The Fall track of course.
*confuzzled*
I cannot think of a single internal customs border inside Germany. Or anywhere in the EU in fact. Isn't that the point of the Single Market? But maybe I am missing the enormous wood because of a few trees
France absolutely includes its overseas territories as a part of France and they vote in the national elections etc just like Northern Ireland do but they're not within the French/EU customs borders.
Germany: The island of Heligoland and the territory of Büsingen (an exclave of the Switzerlands).
Italy: Livigno (not even an exclave, but its still a split and even has a manned customs checkpoint)
Spain: Ceuta and Melilla (pene-exclaves of Morocco).
Had we chosen to go with the backstop it would be because a democratically-elected government chose to do so. As it turned out, we elected a government that imposed a border within our own country - something that you are entirely comfortable with. I find that strange, in particular because it was something that people, including the government itself, hitherto thought the government would or could (politically) never do.
And it did it. And you applaud it. Which as I say I find extraordinary given that as we didn't want to do it, it constitutes arguably the biggest infringement on our "sovereignty" for many decades.
And the idea that they might be consistent and transparent in such an endeavour is patently absurd.
I said Ooh, I like storms
He looked at me with puzzled alarm. Then I realised, Of course a storm in Tennessee can be anything up to a tornado, and it can kill people, and even more often it can seriously damage property. They're not welcome and not enjoyable
The storm duly arrived and to me it seemed fairly dramatic and impressive but they all laughed and said it was just a spot of rain in the end, barely a storm at all
Yesterday she received a clinical negligence payout of a substantial amount but would much rather have not been turned into a Paraplegic at the age of 55
Have fun
Do you think that you can hang tough when the rhythm gets ruff and the djay says he thinks you've had enuff?
Anyway i am off for sun sea and frolics
Hope it goes well.
Took me a fortnight...
Topping is 토핑 .
I believe the overseas departments of France - Mayotte, Reunion, &c - are also completely integrated?
Its all been monetised
Inbound costs are the self-imposed one-way costs.
Dropping inbound to the UK costs means we have abolished the costs on ourselves. We should drop such unnecessary costs on other nations we recognise equivalence with around the globe.
If the EU are imposing inbound checks and costs, then they are imposing the costs upon themselves, not on the UK. Protectionism is a failure.
If guilty, is the likely sentence over or under a year?
But I'd be very surprised if the Bullingdon Barnacle does.
Surprise Indyref2?
Sympathies. Not that this really helps
The tricky bit, in contrast to most languages, in in comprehending speech. There are very few sounds in modern Chinese - a total of 400 distinct syllables, excluding tonal inflections, and many of those sound similar: ji, qi, xi, si, zi, ci, shi, zhi, chi, she, che, zhe and so on.
"Nobody else in Britain would keep huge pay, many free homes and massive support staff if they could no longer do their job.
"Why should Elizabeth Windsor, 96, be treated differently?"
https://twitter.com/Kevin_Maguire/status/1523974276013076481?s=20&t=KrUFrqK0BkJ9-qIT34UVGw
Kevin wants the Queen, 96, to be turfed out of her gaff and sent to Weston Super Mare
Now that we have the Delingpole family and various other Northern working-class radicals holding Prime Minister Starmer to account, press attention will be focused on accountability for the top of the structure, as it would be in any other well-functioning democracy, of course.
More politicians for Wales - 36 extra MSs. 16 constituencies with 6 members each.
- The Senedd should have 96 members
- It should be elected using party lists with mandatory gender quotes and "zipping", which requires parties alternate between women and men on candidate lists
- Seats should be allocated using the D'Hondt formula - which is currently used to make the Senedd better represent how people voted through the election of regional candidates
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-61392204
Someone’s done a swift and ugly find/replace.
Boring weather. But not physically painful, nor potentially life-threatening.
https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1523975600008052737
Previously, on Apr 21, the parliaments of Estonia and Latvia recognized Russia's actions in Ukraine as genocide.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1523963128442200066
"It's easier to note the tone of dripping condescension about the government agenda when it's Charlie reading the speech."
Feels inappropriate to say.
I once heard Cimbrian German spoken in the Dolomites - a peculiar sing-song mix of medieval German and Italian (apparently). Really unusual. Only 2000 speakers, max, so I got lucky
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimbrian_language
I've also heard "ancient" Greek in Calabria, Italy
I've lived in French-speaking countries and definitely my French improved from rusty A-level to something like B2 level according to my language teacher, but still wasn't at the level required where I could really work properly/be my usual amusing witty charming persona.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/10/claims-of-shamans-and-curses-as-south-koreas-president-shuns-official-residence
...Yoon, who has styled himself as the “people’s president”, caused consternation when he said he had no intention of following his predecessors into the Blue House, so named because of the colour of its roof.
He said the building, located at the foot of a mountain on a site once used by the Japanese during their 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, was a “symbol of imperial power” that would be opened to the public as a sign of his commitment to a more open and democratic presidency.
Successive South Korean presidents have lived and worked there since the country became a republic in 1948.
The gesture has not been well received, however. His predecessor, Moon Jae-in, criticised the move as hasty and a potential security threat, while even some of his conservative supporters questioned the decision – estimated to have cost $40m – at a time when Yoon should be focusing on the economy and North Korea.
Yoon, 61, has been forced to deny that he and his wife had decided to live elsewhere on the advice of shamanistic healers, whose shady role in South Korean politics became an issue during the election campaign...
QEII is relatively unusual in having given the speech herself so many times, Queen Victoria only gave the speech seven times between 1866 and her death in 1901.
Currygate is going to be harder to pin down, even if there was an element of taking the piss, because it was legitimate for people not employed to be there, so working out whether anyone was there improperly is harder and because the definition of campaigning is looser than the definition of being there for paid employment. Sitting there with a beer chatting about doorstep feedback could potentially fall under allowable activity.
Currygate all hinges on witness testimony, I guess - how people actually present saw it.
*or engaged in an activity that constituted a reasonable excuse, such as campaigning.
New thread