Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
If we invoke the 16th Article of the Treaty, as per the Treaty that was ratified, how is that abrogating anything? That is something the Treaty explicitly permits, so surely you must view that to be perfectly reasonable and entirely within the rules?
If we invoke Article 16, we would not be in breach of anything.
On the other hand, if the Government were to whip and pass an Act that was in clear violation of our Treaty obligations - as the DUP demands - then well... we would be.
The problem with Article 16 is - of course - that it is entirely likely that arbitration says (basically) "in December, your government's own report to the Northern Ireland Select Committee reported progress is being made, and that no breach has yet occurred, so why have you invoked an Article meant to be used only in those circumstances?"
Which is why I'd prefer A16.
Considering that Sercovic this week essentially confirmed an agreement couldn't be reached between what the DUP demand and the EU is prepared to offer at the minute it seems to me a simple answer to your question is "progress hasn't been reached, there is a treat to social stability and so action is required until an agreement is reached".
And if arbitration goes against us?
What then?
When. Not if. BR has no plan other than rip up the agreement and walk away. Apparently the EU can't do anything against us so we will be free. Free to do what we wanna do. We wanna have a good time.
So lets trigger A16. I know the treaty says this is a time-limited safety valve and not the end game BR purports it to be. But thats ok because the treaty is wrong and all the lawyers are wrong and the diplomats are wrong and BR is righr.
He is a colossus of intellect. All those decades of so many politicians and diplomats of all nations desperately trying to find a solution to the most difficult problem this side of Palestine and yet the answer was so simple it could be found by a simple keyboard warrior with a little too much time on his hands. Incredible. Literally.
Covid/NHS personal experience update. Just back from a mental health referral. Help has been almost non existent during covid but pleased to say very positive young woman promising all sorts of things we can look at, back to proper tailored help proposals, and will try and get back to me by Friday with a plan. Things are slowly emerging and healing from the carnage. I would struggle to explain just how bleak things were for me trying to deal with bereavement, mental health issues/disability in a little flat, alone, during covid. I expect I'm far from unique in that which is why today feels like a victory over the accursed damn virus personally and I hope others find things are improving. And why I'd happily stand on the Frontline to stop lockdown ever happening again. Why am I telling you? I dont know. I know very few people these days and so I just wanted to share something that isn't grumpy political cross punching or me being a tool.
I have just returned from my cup of tea and rich tea biscuit with my beloved on the patio and yours is the first post I have read
Our family have suffered and continue to suffer from mental health problems including my eldest with near 3 years of PTSD and anxiety and it is clear that both here in the UK and in my eldest's case in Canada mental health services have simply not been able to cope and indeed have been overwhelmed by covid
I really wish you all the best and that you receive the mental health care you need and are100% on the same page that we must never let HMG impose lockdown on us again
And by the way I see @HYUFD is still havering away with his nonsense on Ireland (and Scotland)
There seem to be a few us of who do not think HMG should be allowed to lockdown again in the manner of the last two years. The current farce over who drank beer during which lockdown illustrates one of the more lighthearted aspects of this policy failure.
Let us hope and maybe try and cajole MPs to ensure that the use of lockdowns is a major feature of the public inquiry.
We need a serious attempt at quantifying the negative/positive aspects more than the glib "the models said if we hadn't lockdown it would be worse".
Edit: I want to see the inquiry take evidence from Sweden for a start.
On topic, I think that both contests will be easy wins for the oppsotion.
Yes, hard to see anything driving Tory turnout in either seat right now, and everything driving 'change/send a message' votes, before we even consider the reasons for each. The only possible hope for the Tories is in Tiverton an LD by election machine malfunction as it's a very large (but proven possible) majority to overturn and in Wakefield Labour being generally crap and infighting. I think in the former we can expect significant Con to LD voter defection, Wakefield will be won more on low Tory turnout I think than direct switchers. Wakefield will probably be the less apocalyptic result for Canus Major
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
OK, so lets play the two scenarios.
In NornIron you've said that the will of some of the residents of Lisburn - a minority - mean that the "boundaries can be redrawn" if need be, with the majority booted into the republic. If that means crazy enclaves then thats ok with you, because they are armed.
In Scotland the majority want a vote on their future. Not terrorism. Not even UDI, jut a vote. You are so against it you're practically volunteering to drive a tank in the special military operation to crush the Scotch.
You can't see the screaming absurdity and hypocrisy of your position?
No, Scotland does not have a history of terrorism unlike Northern Ireland so the situations are not comparable
aren't you somewhat misrepresenting it? it's obviously supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek article - as are all the Pass Notes series, and it doesn't seem to actually contain any examples?
You must surely mean a completely different article that I can't find on the guardian website
Himterrupting would be better than manterrupting.
Wow.. Manterrupting doesn't get underlined as misspelt!
I’d like to take credit for just this minute inventing the word “quimgument” which deftly captures the way some women seek to end a losing argument by saying “you’re bullying a woman so I am going to ignore you and also you’re wrong but don’t bother answering you awful man because remember I have ovaries”
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
That always has been the policy of the Conservative & Unionist Party, hasn't it?
Think of all the difficulty they caused for poor Mr Gladstone.
Our young HY is always a very consistent Conservative.
A great opportunity for one of my fav quotes of all time: “Gladstone .. spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question, ...” W.C. Sellar, 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England
Just to say that this great and true quotation has had more than one canter round the field today. It deserves it. The whole point of the island of Ireland now (and Henry II's time was probably the same) is to be a work in progress towards something never achieved. The concept of the future of Ireland has the same status as the concept of Jerusalem in our hymns. It bears only a passing relation to the actual one. The current developments are part of a long sequence going back at least to 1169 and probably further. Ireland is Europe's very own minor Israel/Palestine.
Which is precisely why we need to use every bit of 'the rules' that suits our interests in a maximalist way to force them to compromise.
That means using legislation in the Commons, Article 16 or any other tools at our disposal to give them no choice but to co-operate.
Because the notion of "compromise" or "trust" otherwise is for the fairies or the naive.
It was trumpeted by the UK Govt as being a fantastic deal. My concern is not with pragmatism in amending a deal but with the sheer idiocy of agreeing one, each element of which (checks on intra-UK ham sandwiches, for example) small children in Hartlepool could have explained to you, and then less than 18 months later saying that precisely those parts of the deal which were agreed are all of a sudden intolerable.
It is the sheer imbecility of Boris and his govt who so transparently agreed something on the spur of the moment, and either did not understand or did but were dishonest about the effects of it and now we are where we are.
You applaud them reneging on a deal they agreed months ago; I think it a sign of incompetence and/or disingenuousness.
Utter bullshit, bollocks and codswallop.
A deal was needed to get Brexit done and get us out of the Article 50 quagmire, that's been achieved. Now its time for the deal to be renegotiated. That was the plan all along. It was always said that the Irish issue could be revisited once we had a trade deal, so to revisit it now is the system working as designed its not a failure.
As I say you applaud it all. Agree a deal and then, precisely because of the terms of the deal you have just agreed, decide you want to renege on the deal.
In your world that is a good way to run the country. No point me arguing with that.
Who said anything about reneging on it? Not me. I have repeatedly said we should invoke Article 16 of the deal which is quite literally a part of the deal and operate unilaterally within its confines, until a new deal can be agreed as per Article 15 of the deal.
That is completely acting within the rules of the deal, it isn't going against it.
The deal was always meant to be temporary and evolved over time and subject to safeguarding, that is why Articles 15 and 16 were agreed. Using them isn't problematic or dishonest or a bad way to run a country, it is a perfectly good way to run a country.
Not only that, but it’s something that’s already been activated previously from the EU side.
In a new regulation, the European Commission stated: "This is justified as a safeguard measure pursuant to Article 16 of that Protocol in order to avert serious societal difficulties due to a lack of supply threatening to disturb the orderly implementation of the vaccination campaigns in the Member States."
I thought they floated it, and then backed off when it created a firestorm.
They activated it, then did a massive u-turn a day or two later, and really don’t like being reminded of it.
Covid/NHS personal experience update. Just back from a mental health referral. Help has been almost non existent during covid but pleased to say very positive young woman promising all sorts of things we can look at, back to proper tailored help proposals, and will try and get back to me by Friday with a plan. Things are slowly emerging and healing from the carnage. I would struggle to explain just how bleak things were for me trying to deal with bereavement, mental health issues/disability in a little flat, alone, during covid. I expect I'm far from unique in that which is why today feels like a victory over the accursed damn virus personally and I hope others find things are improving. And why I'd happily stand on the Frontline to stop lockdown ever happening again. Why am I telling you? I dont know. I know very few people these days and so I just wanted to share something that isn't grumpy political cross punching or me being a tool.
I have just returned from my cup of tea and rich tea biscuit with my beloved on the patio and yours is the first post I have read
Our family have suffered and continue to suffer from mental health problems including my eldest with near 3 years of PTSD and anxiety and it is clear that both here in the UK and in my eldest's case in Canada mental health services have simply not been able to cope and indeed have been overwhelmed by covid
I really wish you all the best and that you receive the mental health care you need and are100% on the same page that we must never let HMG impose lockdown on us again
And by the way I see @HYUFD is still havering away with his nonsense on Ireland (and Scotland)
There seem to be a few us of who do not think HMG should be allowed to lockdown again in the manner of the last two years. The current farce over who drank beer during which lockdown illustrates one of the more lighthearted aspects of this policy failure.
Let us hope and maybe try and cajole MPs to ensure that the use of lockdowns is a major feature of the public inquiry.
Why spend money on the past? It's not like we're going to learn anything. All sorts of laws were almost certainly broken, and most of those breeches were entirely right. The commercial aspects of covid are worth a dig, but I don't think the moral and political ones are.
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
If we invoke the 16th Article of the Treaty, as per the Treaty that was ratified, how is that abrogating anything? That is something the Treaty explicitly permits, so surely you must view that to be perfectly reasonable and entirely within the rules?
If we invoke Article 16, we would not be in breach of anything.
On the other hand, if the Government were to whip and pass an Act that was in clear violation of our Treaty obligations - as the DUP demands - then well... we would be.
The problem with Article 16 is - of course - that it is entirely likely that arbitration says (basically) "in December, your government's own report to the Northern Ireland Select Committee reported progress is being made, and that no breach has yet occurred, so why have you invoked an Article meant to be used only in those circumstances?"
Which is why I'd prefer A16.
Considering that Sercovic this week essentially confirmed an agreement couldn't be reached between what the DUP demand and the EU is prepared to offer at the minute it seems to me a simple answer to your question is "progress hasn't been reached, there is a treat to social stability and so action is required until an agreement is reached".
And if arbitration goes against us?
What then?
Cross that bridge if we get there.
If it doesn't, then what?
If it doesn't, great.
But we can't go in saying "well, I'm taking it to arbitration, and if I don't like the result, I'm going to ignore it."
We don't need to go in taking it to arbitration, we need to go in with unilateral actions as per A16 which we are perfectly entitled to do.
Article 16 allows us to act unilaterally and retain unilateral actions until the Joint Committee (which we like the EU hold a veto over) agrees a solution.
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Isn't it more like someone saying "the UK is always dominated by London financial interests"? You could argue that it's wrong, but it's not necessarily based on prejudice against London.
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
That always has been the policy of the Conservative & Unionist Party, hasn't it?
Think of all the difficulty they caused for poor Mr Gladstone.
Our young HY is always a very consistent Conservative.
Unlike some on here I would always have been a Tory and Unionist, including a Disraeli and Salisbury and Balfour and Bonar Law Tory not a Gladstone or Asquith and Lloyd George Liberal
Covid/NHS personal experience update. Just back from a mental health referral. Help has been almost non existent during covid but pleased to say very positive young woman promising all sorts of things we can look at, back to proper tailored help proposals, and will try and get back to me by Friday with a plan. Things are slowly emerging and healing from the carnage. I would struggle to explain just how bleak things were for me trying to deal with bereavement, mental health issues/disability in a little flat, alone, during covid. I expect I'm far from unique in that which is why today feels like a victory over the accursed damn virus personally and I hope others find things are improving. And why I'd happily stand on the Frontline to stop lockdown ever happening again. Why am I telling you? I dont know. I know very few people these days and so I just wanted to share something that isn't grumpy political cross punching or me being a tool.
I have just returned from my cup of tea and rich tea biscuit with my beloved on the patio and yours is the first post I have read
Our family have suffered and continue to suffer from mental health problems including my eldest with near 3 years of PTSD and anxiety and it is clear that both here in the UK and in my eldest's case in Canada mental health services have simply not been able to cope and indeed have been overwhelmed by covid
I really wish you all the best and that you receive the mental health care you need and are100% on the same page that we must never let HMG impose lockdown on us again
And by the way I see @HYUFD is still havering away with his nonsense on Ireland (and Scotland)
There seem to be a few us of who do not think HMG should be allowed to lockdown again in the manner of the last two years. The current farce over who drank beer during which lockdown illustrates one of the more lighthearted aspects of this policy failure.
Let us hope and maybe try and cajole MPs to ensure that the use of lockdowns is a major feature of the public inquiry.
We need a serious attempt at quantifying the negative/positive aspects more than the glib "the models said if we hadn't lockdown it would be worse".
Edit: I want to see the inquiry take evidence from Sweden for a start.
Before the inquiry, there's the WHO gathering and proposed changes next week to watch. They are proposing changes to give them much more authority to direct pandemic responses globally and override national sovereignty potentially. Given how badly they messed up in Jan 2020, the detail is crucial and must be pushed back on if it overrides sovereignty. Scott Morrison was interviewed on it and was very pro. Which automatically sets off my alarm.
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
Whoosh straight over your head.
Well of course it should be handles with care.
But you argue about putting down demonstrations in Scotland with tanks. You admire the force used in Spain. You give no quarter on compromise with your opponents views on anything. Quoting you on a number of occasions you have said 'Tough the Tories won'.
Yet as soon as violence is threatened you fold like a pack of cards.
So your argument presumably is to us Remainers we should take up arms as should the Scot Nats. What a pathetic irresponsible response.
There is no history of significant terrorism in Scotland and it is within the UK government's right to refuse an indyref2.
If Remainers had taken up arms for their own areas to stay in the EU then there might have been a case to consider it. They didn't, nor did they even vote in most Remain areas for the LDs in 2019 who outright rejected Brexit.
The Good Friday Agreement and Sinn Fein representation at Stormont in the executive only emerged of course because of IRA violence in NI and GB
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Being disappointed with German mercantilism at a time they're circumventing sanctions on Russia isn't prejudice.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Covid/NHS personal experience update. Just back from a mental health referral. Help has been almost non existent during covid but pleased to say very positive young woman promising all sorts of things we can look at, back to proper tailored help proposals, and will try and get back to me by Friday with a plan. Things are slowly emerging and healing from the carnage. I would struggle to explain just how bleak things were for me trying to deal with bereavement, mental health issues/disability in a little flat, alone, during covid. I expect I'm far from unique in that which is why today feels like a victory over the accursed damn virus personally and I hope others find things are improving. And why I'd happily stand on the Frontline to stop lockdown ever happening again. Why am I telling you? I dont know. I know very few people these days and so I just wanted to share something that isn't grumpy political cross punching or me being a tool.
Well done. I'm pleased to hear you've had a good experience from your appointment and you on he road to recovery. Long may it continue!
I myself have been through quite a significant health issue this year and the NHS has done a very good job treating me. I'm on the road to recovery a well thankfully.
Good to hear. The NHS still has significant challenges, that said. Glad to hear that it was good to you.
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
That always has been the policy of the Conservative & Unionist Party, hasn't it?
Think of all the difficulty they caused for poor Mr Gladstone.
Our young HY is always a very consistent Conservative.
A great opportunity for one of my fav quotes of all time: “Gladstone .. spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question, ...” W.C. Sellar, 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England
Just to say that this great and true quotation has had more than one canter round the field today. It deserves it. The whole point of the island of Ireland now (and Henry II's time was probably the same) is to be a work in progress towards something never achieved. The concept of the future of Ireland has the same status as the concept of Jerusalem in our hymns. It bears only a passing relation to the actual one. The current developments are part of a long sequence going back at least to 1169 and probably further. Ireland is Europe's very own minor Israel/Palestine.
Indeed, I have used this quote perhaps too many times on this forum, particularly when some posters, ones that I suspect have probably never set foot on the island of Ireland suggest some simplistic solution. Those of us that spent time there during The Troubles know it is somewhat more problematic.
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
Whoosh straight over your head.
Well of course it should be handles with care.
But you argue about putting down demonstrations in Scotland with tanks. You admire the force used in Spain. You give no quarter on compromise with your opponents views on anything. Quoting you on a number of occasions you have said 'Tough the Tories won'.
Yet as soon as violence is threatened you fold like a pack of cards.
So your argument presumably is to us Remainers we should take up arms as should the Scot Nats. What a pathetic irresponsible response.
There is no history of significant terrorism in Scotland and it is within the UK government's right to refuse an indyref2.
If Remainers had taken up arms for their own areas to stay in the EU then there might have been a case to consider it. They didn't, nor did they even vote in most Remain areas for the LDs in 2019 who outright rejected Brexit.
The Good Friday Agreement and Sinn Fein representation at Stormont in the executive only emerged of course because of IRA violence in NI and GB
Twat.
Complete, total, unmitigated twat.
Weren't you just seeking people on your side? Insulting a fellow poster and using obnoxoius language to do so is hardly likely to boost your case.
Covid/NHS personal experience update. Just back from a mental health referral. Help has been almost non existent during covid but pleased to say very positive young woman promising all sorts of things we can look at, back to proper tailored help proposals, and will try and get back to me by Friday with a plan. Things are slowly emerging and healing from the carnage. I would struggle to explain just how bleak things were for me trying to deal with bereavement, mental health issues/disability in a little flat, alone, during covid. I expect I'm far from unique in that which is why today feels like a victory over the accursed damn virus personally and I hope others find things are improving. And why I'd happily stand on the Frontline to stop lockdown ever happening again. Why am I telling you? I dont know. I know very few people these days and so I just wanted to share something that isn't grumpy political cross punching or me being a tool.
I was just about to reply to your message on the other thread....pompous....I can't remember the rest! Anyway great post. I remember you from first time round when dyed...came first and 'pompous' notwithstanding I always enjoyed your posts. Best of luck and I hope things start getting better. I think you lived near Norfolk so at least you've got some countryside now you've been freed.
On topic, I think that both contests will be easy wins for the oppsotion.
Even if the angry Labour Party field a splitter candidate, local and till last week Labour through and through, against Starmer’s hated parachuted in arch remainer, in a Tory held marginal?
Better odds today, but a safer bet when we know the candidates in that one?
Bone's point seems to be that May was far too focussed on getting ACTUAL agreement (which may have been sustainable). It was only when Johnson promised whatever it took, in bad faith, that he got a deal. The same deal now falling apart. So, let's have another deal like that. 👀 https://twitter.com/PeterBoneUK/status/1526582334836948993
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
If we invoke the 16th Article of the Treaty, as per the Treaty that was ratified, how is that abrogating anything? That is something the Treaty explicitly permits, so surely you must view that to be perfectly reasonable and entirely within the rules?
If we invoke Article 16, we would not be in breach of anything.
On the other hand, if the Government were to whip and pass an Act that was in clear violation of our Treaty obligations - as the DUP demands - then well... we would be.
The problem with Article 16 is - of course - that it is entirely likely that arbitration says (basically) "in December, your government's own report to the Northern Ireland Select Committee reported progress is being made, and that no breach has yet occurred, so why have you invoked an Article meant to be used only in those circumstances?"
Which is why I'd prefer A16.
Considering that Sercovic this week essentially confirmed an agreement couldn't be reached between what the DUP demand and the EU is prepared to offer at the minute it seems to me a simple answer to your question is "progress hasn't been reached, there is a treat to social stability and so action is required until an agreement is reached".
And if arbitration goes against us?
What then?
Cross that bridge if we get there.
If it doesn't, then what?
If it doesn't, great.
But we can't go in saying "well, I'm taking it to arbitration, and if I don't like the result, I'm going to ignore it."
We don't need to go in taking it to arbitration, we need to go in with unilateral actions as per A16 which we are perfectly entitled to do.
Article 16 allows us to act unilaterally and retain unilateral actions until the Joint Committee (which we like the EU hold a veto over) agrees a solution.
Fair enough and thank you.
Personally, I am OK with triggering Article 16, so long as it contains a reasonable set of mitigation measures regarding implementation of the TTP for the EU to follow.
If it does not, and we were never serious about being bound by the treaty we signed, then I take a much dimmer view.
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Being disappointed with German mercantilism at a time they're circumventing sanctions on Russia isn't prejudice.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Most of your posts genuinely stink of prejudice. I am not sure where your prejudice extends to, but examples include (but are not ,limited to) simplistic attacks on EU, Germans (both in this case), French, Irish, Roman Catholics, people of faith. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a wizened grumpy old octogenarian who had rarely set foot outside somewhere like a village in North Yorkshire, where you surround yourself with other prejudiced old gits who complain about the world not being how it ought to be and boring everyone senseless with your "wisdom" on how the world would be better if everyone were English, and presumably right wing Tory.
Covid/NHS personal experience update. Just back from a mental health referral. Help has been almost non existent during covid but pleased to say very positive young woman promising all sorts of things we can look at, back to proper tailored help proposals, and will try and get back to me by Friday with a plan. Things are slowly emerging and healing from the carnage. I would struggle to explain just how bleak things were for me trying to deal with bereavement, mental health issues/disability in a little flat, alone, during covid. I expect I'm far from unique in that which is why today feels like a victory over the accursed damn virus personally and I hope others find things are improving. And why I'd happily stand on the Frontline to stop lockdown ever happening again. Why am I telling you? I dont know. I know very few people these days and so I just wanted to share something that isn't grumpy political cross punching or me being a tool.
I have just returned from my cup of tea and rich tea biscuit with my beloved on the patio and yours is the first post I have read
Our family have suffered and continue to suffer from mental health problems including my eldest with near 3 years of PTSD and anxiety and it is clear that both here in the UK and in my eldest's case in Canada mental health services have simply not been able to cope and indeed have been overwhelmed by covid
I really wish you all the best and that you receive the mental health care you need and are100% on the same page that we must never let HMG impose lockdown on us again
And by the way I see @HYUFD is still havering away with his nonsense on Ireland (and Scotland)
There seem to be a few us of who do not think HMG should be allowed to lockdown again in the manner of the last two years. The current farce over who drank beer during which lockdown illustrates one of the more lighthearted aspects of this policy failure.
Let us hope and maybe try and cajole MPs to ensure that the use of lockdowns is a major feature of the public inquiry.
We need a serious attempt at quantifying the negative/positive aspects more than the glib "the models said if we hadn't lockdown it would be worse".
Edit: I want to see the inquiry take evidence from Sweden for a start.
Before the inquiry, there's the WHO gathering and proposed changes next week to watch. They are proposing changes to give them much more authority to direct pandemic responses globally and override national sovereignty potentially. Given how badly they messed up in Jan 2020, the detail is crucial and must be pushed back on if it overrides sovereignty. Scott Morrison was interviewed on it and was very pro. Which automatically sets off my alarm.
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Isn't it more like someone saying "the UK is always dominated by London financial interests"? You could argue that it's wrong, but it's not necessarily based on prejudice against London.
It would be similarly simplistic. If the person had a track record of hating London or city types it would also almost certainly be prejudiced.
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
Whoosh straight over your head.
Well of course it should be handles with care.
But you argue about putting down demonstrations in Scotland with tanks. You admire the force used in Spain. You give no quarter on compromise with your opponents views on anything. Quoting you on a number of occasions you have said 'Tough the Tories won'.
Yet as soon as violence is threatened you fold like a pack of cards.
So your argument presumably is to us Remainers we should take up arms as should the Scot Nats. What a pathetic irresponsible response.
There is no history of significant terrorism in Scotland and it is within the UK government's right to refuse an indyref2.
If Remainers had taken up arms for their own areas to stay in the EU then there might have been a case to consider it. They didn't, nor did they even vote in most Remain areas for the LDs in 2019 who outright rejected Brexit.
The Good Friday Agreement and Sinn Fein representation at Stormont in the executive only emerged of course because of IRA violence in NI and GB
In the word(s) of General McAuliffe: 'Nuts!'
from wiki
"To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.
The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Ourthe near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.
There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.
If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours term.
All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well-known American humanity.
The German Commander."
According to those present when McAuliffe received the German message, he read it, crumpled it into a ball, threw it in a wastepaper basket, and muttered, "Aw, nuts". The officers in McAuliffe's command post were trying to find suitable language for an official reply when Lt. Col. Harry Kinnard suggested that McAuliffe's first response summed up the situation pretty well, and the others agreed. The official reply was typed and delivered by Colonel Joseph Harper, commanding the 327th Glider Infantry, to the German delegation. It was as follows:
"To the German Commander.
NUTS!
The American Commander."
The German major appeared confused and asked Harper what the message meant. Harper said, "In plain English? Go to hell."
The choice of "Nuts!" rather than something earthier was typical for McAuliffe. Captain Vincent Vicari, his personal aide at the time, recalled that "General Mac was the only general I ever knew who did not use profane language. 'Nuts' was part of his normal vocabulary."
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
That always has been the policy of the Conservative & Unionist Party, hasn't it?
Think of all the difficulty they caused for poor Mr Gladstone.
Our young HY is always a very consistent Conservative.
A great opportunity for one of my fav quotes of all time: “Gladstone .. spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question, ...” W.C. Sellar, 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England
Just to say that this great and true quotation has had more than one canter round the field today. It deserves it. The whole point of the island of Ireland now (and Henry II's time was probably the same) is to be a work in progress towards something never achieved. The concept of the future of Ireland has the same status as the concept of Jerusalem in our hymns. It bears only a passing relation to the actual one. The current developments are part of a long sequence going back at least to 1169 and probably further. Ireland is Europe's very own minor Israel/Palestine.
Indeed, I have used this quote perhaps too many times on this forum, particularly when some posters, ones that I suspect have probably never set foot on the island of Ireland suggest some simplistic solution. Those of us that spent time there during The Troubles know it is somewhat more problematic.
Quite. Perhaps it is fair to say that the PM of the UK is in a sort of nightmare one might have in which you dream are sitting in an exam room and turn the paper which says:
"Question 1. You have to guess the question; you also have to guess what is the subject of the examination. Write an essay on this topic. You have three hours. Whatever you answer you will be jeered and mocked. If you make a significant error public places will be blown to bits and children will die".
Personally, I am OK with triggering Article 16, so long as it contains a reasonable set of mitigation measures regarding implementation of the TTP for the EU to follow.
If it does not, and we were never serious about being bound by the treaty we signed, then I take a much dimmer view.
If you take the view that there is an incompatibility between the operation of the protocol and the Good Friday Agreement then that question becomes more complex.
On the EU's side there was a mismatch between the rhetoric about protecting the Good Friday Agreement being the number one priority and the reality that they were prioritising the integrity of the single market, but they signed a treaty that gave us the ability to reprioritise the Good Friday Agreement in line with their rhetoric.
And on @BBCPM I reported that Conservative MPs have been told the the legislation to override aspects of the NI protocol will be introduced on 6 June with the main 2nd reading on 20 June. So if Lords vote it down it will become law - under the Parliament act - a year later https://twitter.com/evanhd/status/1526585576442449922
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
Whoosh straight over your head.
Well of course it should be handles with care.
But you argue about putting down demonstrations in Scotland with tanks. You admire the force used in Spain. You give no quarter on compromise with your opponents views on anything. Quoting you on a number of occasions you have said 'Tough the Tories won'.
Yet as soon as violence is threatened you fold like a pack of cards.
So your argument presumably is to us Remainers we should take up arms as should the Scot Nats. What a pathetic irresponsible response.
There is no history of significant terrorism in Scotland and it is within the UK government's right to refuse an indyref2.
If Remainers had taken up arms for their own areas to stay in the EU then there might have been a case to consider it. They didn't, nor did they even vote in most Remain areas for the LDs in 2019 who outright rejected Brexit.
The Good Friday Agreement and Sinn Fein representation at Stormont in the executive only emerged of course because of IRA violence in NI and GB
Twat.
Complete, total, unmitigated twat.
While I do not see name calling as achieving anything, @HYUFD posts this pm gave me the opportunity to have a cuppa with my beloved on our patio and leave him to prattle on and now I have returned he is still at it so I turn on the tv and listen to the ludicrous Rooney libel trial or the equally ludicrous Depp trial and come to the conclusion the world has lost leave of its senses and another cuppa beckons
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
If we invoke the 16th Article of the Treaty, as per the Treaty that was ratified, how is that abrogating anything? That is something the Treaty explicitly permits, so surely you must view that to be perfectly reasonable and entirely within the rules?
If we invoke Article 16, we would not be in breach of anything.
On the other hand, if the Government were to whip and pass an Act that was in clear violation of our Treaty obligations - as the DUP demands - then well... we would be.
The problem with Article 16 is - of course - that it is entirely likely that arbitration says (basically) "in December, your government's own report to the Northern Ireland Select Committee reported progress is being made, and that no breach has yet occurred, so why have you invoked an Article meant to be used only in those circumstances?"
Which is why I'd prefer A16.
Considering that Sercovic this week essentially confirmed an agreement couldn't be reached between what the DUP demand and the EU is prepared to offer at the minute it seems to me a simple answer to your question is "progress hasn't been reached, there is a treat to social stability and so action is required until an agreement is reached".
And if arbitration goes against us?
What then?
Cross that bridge if we get there.
If it doesn't, then what?
If it doesn't, great.
But we can't go in saying "well, I'm taking it to arbitration, and if I don't like the result, I'm going to ignore it."
We don't need to go in taking it to arbitration, we need to go in with unilateral actions as per A16 which we are perfectly entitled to do.
Article 16 allows us to act unilaterally and retain unilateral actions until the Joint Committee (which we like the EU hold a veto over) agrees a solution.
Fair enough and thank you.
Personally, I am OK with triggering Article 16, so long as it contains a reasonable set of mitigation measures regarding implementation of the TTP for the EU to follow.
If it does not, and we were never serious about being bound by the treaty we signed, then I take a much dimmer view.
The thing with International treaties is that they're asking you not to do what they think you might do. Don't invade Ruritania! 50/50 they got your intention right. You obviously sign. Then you look more closely at why others think that invading Ruritania is a great move for you.
Can we place an administrative border round HY's house? Would make life a lot easier for the rest of us.
"Just redraw the boundaries"
On his logic, we could take it seriously only if he started a terrorist campaign. Or am I misynderstanding it?
He is waging a terrorist war against fact. And logic. And rational argument.
BUILD THE WALL
Northern Ireland was only created in the first place as Carson had gathered 100,000 armed Protestant volunteers threatening civil war in Ireland if it wasn't.
Carson was a Dubliner who said "I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power."
He was a Galwayman from Athenry - he merely represented TCD.
Covid/NHS personal experience update. Just back from a mental health referral. Help has been almost non existent during covid but pleased to say very positive young woman promising all sorts of things we can look at, back to proper tailored help proposals, and will try and get back to me by Friday with a plan. Things are slowly emerging and healing from the carnage. I would struggle to explain just how bleak things were for me trying to deal with bereavement, mental health issues/disability in a little flat, alone, during covid. I expect I'm far from unique in that which is why today feels like a victory over the accursed damn virus personally and I hope others find things are improving. And why I'd happily stand on the Frontline to stop lockdown ever happening again. Why am I telling you? I dont know. I know very few people these days and so I just wanted to share something that isn't grumpy political cross punching or me being a tool.
I have just returned from my cup of tea and rich tea biscuit with my beloved on the patio and yours is the first post I have read
Our family have suffered and continue to suffer from mental health problems including my eldest with near 3 years of PTSD and anxiety and it is clear that both here in the UK and in my eldest's case in Canada mental health services have simply not been able to cope and indeed have been overwhelmed by covid
I really wish you all the best and that you receive the mental health care you need and are100% on the same page that we must never let HMG impose lockdown on us again
And by the way I see @HYUFD is still havering away with his nonsense on Ireland (and Scotland)
There seem to be a few us of who do not think HMG should be allowed to lockdown again in the manner of the last two years. The current farce over who drank beer during which lockdown illustrates one of the more lighthearted aspects of this policy failure.
Let us hope and maybe try and cajole MPs to ensure that the use of lockdowns is a major feature of the public inquiry.
We need a serious attempt at quantifying the negative/positive aspects more than the glib "the models said if we hadn't lockdown it would be worse".
Edit: I want to see the inquiry take evidence from Sweden for a start.
Before the inquiry, there's the WHO gathering and proposed changes next week to watch. They are proposing changes to give them much more authority to direct pandemic responses globally and override national sovereignty potentially. Given how badly they messed up in Jan 2020, the detail is crucial and must be pushed back on if it overrides sovereignty. Scott Morrison was interviewed on it and was very pro. Which automatically sets off my alarm.
And on @BBCPM I reported that Conservative MPs have been told the the legislation to override aspects of the NI protocol will be introduced on 6 June with the main 2nd reading on 20 June. So if Lords vote it down it will become law - under the Parliament act - a year later https://twitter.com/evanhd/status/1526585576442449922
Ties in nicely for a huge bust up with the EU mid 2023 and an October 2023 general election?
With threat of Local Wakefield Labour Party not only not helping Starmer’s parachuted in candidate, but actually standing against him themselves, current 6-1 on Conservative hold I just got I think is a strong bet.
When I won a bet on Shropshire North, Partygate was at its finger jabbing angriest and anger all over media in build up, even the Mail. Right now it doesn’t have the feeling of Boris in trouble or libdems can repeat the huge swing, 15/8 on Conservative hold is value there too imo.
Can we place an administrative border round HY's house? Would make life a lot easier for the rest of us.
"Just redraw the boundaries"
On his logic, we could take it seriously only if he started a terrorist campaign. Or am I misynderstanding it?
He is waging a terrorist war against fact. And logic. And rational argument.
BUILD THE WALL
Northern Ireland was only created in the first place as Carson had gathered 100,000 armed Protestant volunteers threatening civil war in Ireland if it wasn't.
Carson was a Dubliner who said "I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power."
Ties in nicely for a huge bust up with the EU mid 2023 and an October 223 general election?
I know the headbangers on here are up for it, but in the middle of a cost of living crisis are all of BoZo's backbenchers really going to vote for a trade war?
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
OK, so lets play the two scenarios.
In NornIron you've said that the will of some of the residents of Lisburn - a minority - mean that the "boundaries can be redrawn" if need be, with the majority booted into the republic. If that means crazy enclaves then thats ok with you, because they are armed.
In Scotland the majority want a vote on their future. Not terrorism. Not even UDI, jut a vote. You are so against it you're practically volunteering to drive a tank in the special military operation to crush the Scotch.
You can't see the screaming absurdity and hypocrisy of your position?
No, Scotland does not have a history of terrorism unlike Northern Ireland so the situations are not comparable
It is beyond belief that you don't understand this. We all agree there is no history of terrorism in Scotland or by Remainers, but what you are saying is that if they did take up arms you would capitulate, but if they are peaceful they should be put down with utmost force and no quarter given, even to the extent of using tanks at demos.
And you don't see how dangerous that is and just encourages terrorism. What deranged person would not think, I have nothing to lose by taking up the armalite like the guys over in NI.
Can we place an administrative border round HY's house? Would make life a lot easier for the rest of us.
"Just redraw the boundaries"
On his logic, we could take it seriously only if he started a terrorist campaign. Or am I misynderstanding it?
He is waging a terrorist war against fact. And logic. And rational argument.
BUILD THE WALL
Northern Ireland was only created in the first place as Carson had gathered 100,000 armed Protestant volunteers threatening civil war in Ireland if it wasn't.
Carson was a Dubliner who said "I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power."
It was Lloyd George, a Liberal PM not a Tory, who created Northern Ireland rather than force it into the new Irish Free State against its will with the resultant Protestant violence and civil war in the North
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
Whoosh straight over your head.
Well of course it should be handles with care.
But you argue about putting down demonstrations in Scotland with tanks. You admire the force used in Spain. You give no quarter on compromise with your opponents views on anything. Quoting you on a number of occasions you have said 'Tough the Tories won'.
Yet as soon as violence is threatened you fold like a pack of cards.
So your argument presumably is to us Remainers we should take up arms as should the Scot Nats. What a pathetic irresponsible response.
There is no history of significant terrorism in Scotland and it is within the UK government's right to refuse an indyref2.
If Remainers had taken up arms for their own areas to stay in the EU then there might have been a case to consider it. They didn't, nor did they even vote in most Remain areas for the LDs in 2019 who outright rejected Brexit.
The Good Friday Agreement and Sinn Fein representation at Stormont in the executive only emerged of course because of IRA violence in NI and GB
Twat.
Complete, total, unmitigated twat.
While I do not see name calling as achieving anything, @HYUFD posts this pm gave me the opportunity to have a cuppa with my beloved on our patio and leave him to prattle on and now I have returned he is still at it so I turn on the tv and listen to the ludicrous Rooney libel trial or the equally ludicrous Depp trial and come to the conclusion the world has lost leave of its senses and another cuppa beckons
I think Vardy Vs Rooney is going to prove once again that everyone loses in libel trials (except the lawyers)...
The thing with International treaties is that they're asking you not to do what they think you might do. Don't invade Ruritania! 50/50 they got your intention right. You obviously sign. Then you look more closely at why others think that invading Ruritania is a great move for you.
Most of us, before signing documents, do the "look more closely" bit first. It would be rather nice if the Government did the same.
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
That always has been the policy of the Conservative & Unionist Party, hasn't it?
Think of all the difficulty they caused for poor Mr Gladstone.
Our young HY is always a very consistent Conservative.
A great opportunity for one of my fav quotes of all time: “Gladstone .. spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question, ...” W.C. Sellar, 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England
Just to say that this great and true quotation has had more than one canter round the field today. It deserves it. The whole point of the island of Ireland now (and Henry II's time was probably the same) is to be a work in progress towards something never achieved. The concept of the future of Ireland has the same status as the concept of Jerusalem in our hymns. It bears only a passing relation to the actual one. The current developments are part of a long sequence going back at least to 1169 and probably further. Ireland is Europe's very own minor Israel/Palestine.
Indeed, I have used this quote perhaps too many times on this forum, particularly when some posters, ones that I suspect have probably never set foot on the island of Ireland suggest some simplistic solution. Those of us that spent time there during The Troubles know it is somewhat more problematic.
Ties in nicely for a huge bust up with the EU mid 2023 and an October 223 general election?
I know the headbangers on here are up for it, but in the middle of a cost of living crisis are all of BoZo's backbenchers really going to vote for a trade war?
The bigger question is how are Labour going to address this without being seen as on the EU side
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
Whoosh straight over your head.
Well of course it should be handles with care.
But you argue about putting down demonstrations in Scotland with tanks. You admire the force used in Spain. You give no quarter on compromise with your opponents views on anything. Quoting you on a number of occasions you have said 'Tough the Tories won'.
Yet as soon as violence is threatened you fold like a pack of cards.
So your argument presumably is to us Remainers we should take up arms as should the Scot Nats. What a pathetic irresponsible response.
There is no history of significant terrorism in Scotland and it is within the UK government's right to refuse an indyref2.
If Remainers had taken up arms for their own areas to stay in the EU then there might have been a case to consider it. They didn't, nor did they even vote in most Remain areas for the LDs in 2019 who outright rejected Brexit.
The Good Friday Agreement and Sinn Fein representation at Stormont in the executive only emerged of course because of IRA violence in NI and GB
Twat.
Complete, total, unmitigated twat.
I think you're a bit harsh there Stuart, you have redeeming features as well.
Sorry - I hit the offtopic button by mistake. Yes - the question is, will they hang on in there until after conviction, or will they be persuaded to resign "in order to focus on clearing their name" and get the by-elections out of the way all in one go.
Bone's point seems to be that May was far too focussed on getting ACTUAL agreement (which may have been sustainable). It was only when Johnson promised whatever it took, in bad faith, that he got a deal. The same deal now falling apart. So, let's have another deal like that. 👀 https://twitter.com/PeterBoneUK/status/1526582334836948993
Bone didn't say that, he didn't say lie or anything like it. 🙄
You on the other hand have no integrity and are quoting people who are lying and making up fake quotations because they lie through their teeth as they hate Brexit and so do you. 🤦♂️
The thing with International treaties is that they're asking you not to do what they think you might do. Don't invade Ruritania! 50/50 they got your intention right. You obviously sign. Then you look more closely at why others think that invading Ruritania is a great move for you.
Most of us, before signing documents, do the "look more closely" bit first. It would be rather nice if the Government did the same.
Nick of course they looked more closely. But rules and treaty terms are for little people. Certainly not GREAT Britain.
As has been discussed on here, the protocol had a break clause; and it's perfectly understandable not to want checks on sandwiches moving from Plymouth to Portrush. Indeed that is the Labour Party position also.
For me it is the sheer arrogance and disingenuousness of the govt in agreeing this deal (which clearly and explicitly described the need for checks on sandwiches) only to trigger that break clause months later quoting sandwich checks as being intolerable.
The question of negotiating in good faith is thereby called into question. Will they be found out? Not so far is the answer so why shouldn't they think they can continue doing it.
Are any of these many retweet-wankers actually prepared to look at solutions to the delicate issues around trade in Northern Ireland, or are they happy to further inflame tensions in NI if it means they can bash the UK government?
Ties in nicely for a huge bust up with the EU mid 2023 and an October 223 general election?
I know the headbangers on here are up for it, but in the middle of a cost of living crisis are all of BoZo's backbenchers really going to vote for a trade war?
The bigger question is how are Labour going to address this without being seen as on the EU side
Quite easy really. Bang home the Peter Bone quote and talk about how important it is to be seen internationally to be true to our word when signing international treaties and this is another example of Boris Johnson lying.
Bone's point seems to be that May was far too focussed on getting ACTUAL agreement (which may have been sustainable). It was only when Johnson promised whatever it took, in bad faith, that he got a deal. The same deal now falling apart. So, let's have another deal like that. 👀 https://twitter.com/PeterBoneUK/status/1526582334836948993
Bone didn't say that, he didn't say lie or anything like it. 🙄
You on the other hand have no integrity and are quoting people who are lying and making up fake quotations because they lie through their teeth as they hate Brexit and so do you. 🤦♂️
Fake news from Scott? Shirley you can't be serious?
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Being disappointed with German mercantilism at a time they're circumventing sanctions on Russia isn't prejudice.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Most of your posts genuinely stink of prejudice. I am not sure where your prejudice extends to, but examples include (but are not ,limited to) simplistic attacks on EU, Germans (both in this case), French, Irish, Roman Catholics, people of faith. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a wizened grumpy old octogenarian who had rarely set foot outside somewhere like a village in North Yorkshire, where you surround yourself with other prejudiced old gits who complain about the world not being how it ought to be and boring everyone senseless with your "wisdom" on how the world would be better if everyone were English, and presumably right wing Tory.
I have no qualms with people of faith.
I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church as a flawed institution and for very good reason.
My view on faith is much like my view on penises. Its fine to have one, its fine to be proud of it, but please don't wave it around in public and especially don't try and shove it down other people's throats uninvited.
Sorry - I hit the offtopic button by mistake. Yes - the question is, will they hang on in there until after conviction, or will they be persuaded to resign "in order to focus on clearing their name" and get the by-elections out of the way all in one go.
The somewhat tasteless online game now will be the process of elimination to figure out who is a likely suspect who was an MP before 2002
Ties in nicely for a huge bust up with the EU mid 2023 and an October 223 general election?
I know the headbangers on here are up for it, but in the middle of a cost of living crisis are all of BoZo's backbenchers really going to vote for a trade war?
The bigger question is how are Labour going to address this without being seen as on the EU side
Quite easy really. Bang home the Peter Bone quote and talk about how important it is to be seen internationally to be true to our word when signing international treaties and this is another example of Boris Johnson lying.
That do you?
That is a given but it is not a solution other than an endorsement of the EU
The thing with International treaties is that they're asking you not to do what they think you might do. Don't invade Ruritania! 50/50 they got your intention right. You obviously sign. Then you look more closely at why others think that invading Ruritania is a great move for you.
Most of us, before signing documents, do the "look more closely" bit first. It would be rather nice if the Government did the same.
We don't though. We skim read and skip our way through awful nonsense. Unfortunately some of the nonsense seems to be worth something in the ghastly world of lawyers.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Ties in nicely for a huge bust up with the EU mid 2023 and an October 223 general election?
I know the headbangers on here are up for it, but in the middle of a cost of living crisis are all of BoZo's backbenchers really going to vote for a trade war?
The bigger question is how are Labour going to address this without being seen as on the EU side
Quite easy really. Bang home the Peter Bone quote and talk about how important it is to be seen internationally to be true to our word when signing international treaties and this is another example of Boris Johnson lying.
That do you?
That is a given but it is not a solution other than an endorsement of the EU
Nonsense, you don't need to endorse the EU to point out the dishonour and risks being taken here. Besides, the only folk likely to see it as in support of the bogeyman EU are going to be those who are headbanging Tories/UKIPers anyway. It is intended for such folk after all.
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Being disappointed with German mercantilism at a time they're circumventing sanctions on Russia isn't prejudice.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Most of your posts genuinely stink of prejudice. I am not sure where your prejudice extends to, but examples include (but are not ,limited to) simplistic attacks on EU, Germans (both in this case), French, Irish, Roman Catholics, people of faith. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a wizened grumpy old octogenarian who had rarely set foot outside somewhere like a village in North Yorkshire, where you surround yourself with other prejudiced old gits who complain about the world not being how it ought to be and boring everyone senseless with your "wisdom" on how the world would be better if everyone were English, and presumably right wing Tory.
I have no qualms with people of faith.
I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church as a flawed institution and for very good reason.
My view on faith is much like my view on penises. Its fine to have one, its fine to be proud of it, but please don't wave it around in public and especially don't try and shove it down other people's throats uninvited.
"I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church and for very good reason."
Which is? That is, what singles out this one faith tradition for your ire?
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
OK, so lets play the two scenarios.
In NornIron you've said that the will of some of the residents of Lisburn - a minority - mean that the "boundaries can be redrawn" if need be, with the majority booted into the republic. If that means crazy enclaves then thats ok with you, because they are armed.
In Scotland the majority want a vote on their future. Not terrorism. Not even UDI, jut a vote. You are so against it you're practically volunteering to drive a tank in the special military operation to crush the Scotch.
You can't see the screaming absurdity and hypocrisy of your position?
No, Scotland does not have a history of terrorism unlike Northern Ireland so the situations are not comparable
It is beyond belief that you don't understand this. We all agree there is no history of terrorism in Scotland or by Remainers, but what you are saying is that if they did take up arms you would capitulate, but if they are peaceful they should be put down with utmost force and no quarter given, even to the extent of using tanks at demos.
And you don't see how dangerous that is and just encourages terrorism. What deranged person would not think, I have nothing to lose by taking up the armalite like the guys over in NI.
Northern Ireland was only created because of threat of violence in the remaining Protestant loyalist areas if forced into the Irish Free State against their will.
Scotland has no history of terrorism or militant violence like Northern Ireland so the brutal reality is the UK government can refuse an indyref2 without risk of terrorist retaliation from the SNP in the way they could not impose a hard border in Ireland without the risk of terrorist violence from the IRA, the ex military wing of SF.
The GFA only came about too because of the need to end terrorist violence in NI. You may not like it but that is the reality.
Now of course violence by Scottish Nationalists or Remainers would not guarantee this Tory government listened to them, the UK government defied the IRA for decades but it did ultimately lead to a settlement in NI
Well, I am sure you will be delighted to know that I got through my 2 sessions without anyone falling asleep or leaving the room, caught up with old colleagues, met some new people and managed to hand out a few business cards. So - maybe - some new interesting and lucrative work will follow.
But London transport - oof! - I'd forgotten how ghastly it is when it goes wrong. Jubilee Line subject to severe delays, Thameslink trains delayed etc: result = journey in took twice as long as it should have. We country yokels may have to drive everywhere (not true actually) but at least we don't have to endure that! Not a part of London life I miss, I must say.
Now off home to have a well-earned rest.
We had to transfer from Kings X to Paddington and back for our weekend in Oxford. London Underground is truly a wonder of the world, by far the best public transport system I have ever come across anywhere. When I get cross about waiting 6 minutes for the next tube I know it’s time to go home.
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Being disappointed with German mercantilism at a time they're circumventing sanctions on Russia isn't prejudice.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Most of your posts genuinely stink of prejudice. I am not sure where your prejudice extends to, but examples include (but are not ,limited to) simplistic attacks on EU, Germans (both in this case), French, Irish, Roman Catholics, people of faith. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a wizened grumpy old octogenarian who had rarely set foot outside somewhere like a village in North Yorkshire, where you surround yourself with other prejudiced old gits who complain about the world not being how it ought to be and boring everyone senseless with your "wisdom" on how the world would be better if everyone were English, and presumably right wing Tory.
I have no qualms with people of faith.
I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church as a flawed institution and for very good reason.
My view on faith is much like my view on penises. Its fine to have one, its fine to be proud of it, but please don't wave it around in public and especially don't try and shove it down other people's throats uninvited.
You dispute one prejudice, and even that one doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Prejudiced and proud eh?
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Being disappointed with German mercantilism at a time they're circumventing sanctions on Russia isn't prejudice.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Most of your posts genuinely stink of prejudice. I am not sure where your prejudice extends to, but examples include (but are not ,limited to) simplistic attacks on EU, Germans (both in this case), French, Irish, Roman Catholics, people of faith. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a wizened grumpy old octogenarian who had rarely set foot outside somewhere like a village in North Yorkshire, where you surround yourself with other prejudiced old gits who complain about the world not being how it ought to be and boring everyone senseless with your "wisdom" on how the world would be better if everyone were English, and presumably right wing Tory.
I have no qualms with people of faith.
I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church as a flawed institution and for very good reason.
My view on faith is much like my view on penises. Its fine to have one, its fine to be proud of it, but please don't wave it around in public and especially don't try and shove it down other people's throats uninvited.
"I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church and for very good reason."
Which is? That is, what singles out this one faith tradition for your ire?
Not the faith, the institution.
For a litany of abuses and putting its own interests ahead of the victims of its abuse for decades, something it still hasn't put to rights.
It isn't the only institution on the planet I have a qualm with.
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Being disappointed with German mercantilism at a time they're circumventing sanctions on Russia isn't prejudice.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Most of your posts genuinely stink of prejudice. I am not sure where your prejudice extends to, but examples include (but are not ,limited to) simplistic attacks on EU, Germans (both in this case), French, Irish, Roman Catholics, people of faith. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a wizened grumpy old octogenarian who had rarely set foot outside somewhere like a village in North Yorkshire, where you surround yourself with other prejudiced old gits who complain about the world not being how it ought to be and boring everyone senseless with your "wisdom" on how the world would be better if everyone were English, and presumably right wing Tory.
I have no qualms with people of faith.
I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church as a flawed institution and for very good reason.
My view on faith is much like my view on penises. Its fine to have one, its fine to be proud of it, but please don't wave it around in public and especially don't try and shove it down other people's throats uninvited.
"I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church and for very good reason."
Which is? That is, what singles out this one faith tradition for your ire?
Some prejudices are more equal than others it would seem.
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
OK, so lets play the two scenarios.
In NornIron you've said that the will of some of the residents of Lisburn - a minority - mean that the "boundaries can be redrawn" if need be, with the majority booted into the republic. If that means crazy enclaves then thats ok with you, because they are armed.
In Scotland the majority want a vote on their future. Not terrorism. Not even UDI, jut a vote. You are so against it you're practically volunteering to drive a tank in the special military operation to crush the Scotch.
You can't see the screaming absurdity and hypocrisy of your position?
No, Scotland does not have a history of terrorism unlike Northern Ireland so the situations are not comparable
It is beyond belief that you don't understand this. We all agree there is no history of terrorism in Scotland or by Remainers, but what you are saying is that if they did take up arms you would capitulate, but if they are peaceful they should be put down with utmost force and no quarter given, even to the extent of using tanks at demos.
And you don't see how dangerous that is and just encourages terrorism. What deranged person would not think, I have nothing to lose by taking up the armalite like the guys over in NI.
Northern Ireland was only created because of threat of violence in the remaining Protestant loyalist areas if forced into the Irish Free State against their will.
Scotland has no history of terrorism or militant violence like Northern Ireland so the brutal reality is the UK government can refuse an indyref2 without risk of terrorist retaliation from the SNP in the way they could not impose a hard border in Ireland without the risk of terrorist violence from the IRA, the ex military wing of SF.
The GFA only came about too because of the need to end terrorist violence in NI. You may not like it but that is the reality.
Now of course violence by Scottish Nationalists or Remainers would not guarantee this Tory government listened to them, the UK government defied the IRA for decades but it did ultimately lead to a settlement in NI
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Being disappointed with German mercantilism at a time they're circumventing sanctions on Russia isn't prejudice.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Most of your posts genuinely stink of prejudice. I am not sure where your prejudice extends to, but examples include (but are not ,limited to) simplistic attacks on EU, Germans (both in this case), French, Irish, Roman Catholics, people of faith. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a wizened grumpy old octogenarian who had rarely set foot outside somewhere like a village in North Yorkshire, where you surround yourself with other prejudiced old gits who complain about the world not being how it ought to be and boring everyone senseless with your "wisdom" on how the world would be better if everyone were English, and presumably right wing Tory.
I have no qualms with people of faith.
I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church as a flawed institution and for very good reason.
My view on faith is much like my view on penises. Its fine to have one, its fine to be proud of it, but please don't wave it around in public and especially don't try and shove it down other people's throats uninvited.
"I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church and for very good reason."
Which is? That is, what singles out this one faith tradition for your ire?
Not the faith, the institution.
For a litany of abuses and putting its own interests ahead of the victims of its abuse for decades, something it still hasn't put to rights.
It isn't the only institution on the planet I have a qualm with.
I am sure all of those institutions are quaking in their collective boots at the disdain of such a preeminent keyboard warrior.
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Being disappointed with German mercantilism at a time they're circumventing sanctions on Russia isn't prejudice.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Most of your posts genuinely stink of prejudice. I am not sure where your prejudice extends to, but examples include (but are not ,limited to) simplistic attacks on EU, Germans (both in this case), French, Irish, Roman Catholics, people of faith. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a wizened grumpy old octogenarian who had rarely set foot outside somewhere like a village in North Yorkshire, where you surround yourself with other prejudiced old gits who complain about the world not being how it ought to be and boring everyone senseless with your "wisdom" on how the world would be better if everyone were English, and presumably right wing Tory.
I have no qualms with people of faith.
I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church as a flawed institution and for very good reason.
My view on faith is much like my view on penises. Its fine to have one, its fine to be proud of it, but please don't wave it around in public and especially don't try and shove it down other people's throats uninvited.
You dispute one prejudice, and even that one doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Prejudiced and proud eh?
No, not prejudiced, just pointing out the ridiculousness of your position.
Objecting to the actions of the German government no more makes you prejudiced than objecting to the actions of Boris's government makes you prejudiced.
The German government isn't all Germans. The Roman Catholic Church isn't all Catholics. Vladimir Putin isn't all Russians. The GOP isn't all Americans.
Only a simplistic fool would consider objecting to an institution or its leaders like Boris Johnson, or the GOP, or the German government etc is a prejudice against all of that nation, or all of that faith. That is taking L'état, c'est moi to absurd proportions.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency of the political classes
There is a three year investigation backlog, apparently - and one must be careful about assuming that all the allegations are true - but nonetheless those are pretty dismal numbers.
Truss just explicitly said in the Commons that the Protocol was never intended to be set in stone.
Nor should it be. Evolution works. The Protocol in its 15th Article says how the Protocol can be changed by negotiations and in its 16th provides Safeguards to overwrite parts too. Both are entirely appropriate to use.
Its quite amusing to me how many people who deny my notion that post-Brexit Britain can be more nimble and less sclerotic are being horrified at post-Brexit Britain being nimble and not sclerotic.
It's the dishonesty and lack of trustworthiness that are the problem.
Dishonesty is putting up sanctions on Russia and then creating financial mechanisms to break them. The idea that the EU is some virtuous and completely honest organisation is completely ridiculous.
Siri, provide me with a textbook example of whataboutery.
But you want the UK to trust an inherently untrustworthy organisation. They have proven they are willing to stab Ukraine in the back so Germany can keep selling dishwashers. The evidence is clear that the EU can't be trusted and neither can we.
All along I've said that the UK-EU relationship needs to be a tightly defined set of rules. Trust, doing the other one a favour, or expecting a favour from either party is not going to happen, they are not an informal ally who we can rely on to help us when we need it. This isn't New Zealand and Canada loaning up a few hundred trade negotiators in 2017 and 2018, the EU is ultimately a formal ally with whom we have a trade deal and not a lot else.
Everyone needs to see our relationship with the EU through this lens and give up on the fanciful idea that if we do them a favour they might respond in kind. It's not going to happen.
The EU aren't the ones about to tear up an agreement they signed up to just three years ago. Whether the EU is a paragon of virtue or the epitome of evil (a question on which I have ventured no opinion) is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UK should be in the business of signing international treaties with its fingers crossed behind its back. It's a bad look for us and damaging to our ability to operate effectively in international affairs.
No, they're just tearing up the sanctions they agreed on Russia a few weeks ago. So maybe neither country is to be trusted.
But only one is abrogating an international treaty. To be clear, this is not a beauty contest of UK vs EU, my contention that Brexit was a bad idea does not rest on any idea that the EU is some uniquely virtuous organisation, which is as well because I don't think it is. The question is whether signing a treaty that you don't intend to honour because you've dug yourself into a hole by lying to your voters, and then tearing up that treaty a few years later when you supposedly suddenly cotton on to the bits of the treaty that you don't like, is a sensible path of action for a country that wants to be taken seriously and prosper on the world stage. Endless whataboutery and diversionary assaults on the moral integrity of the EU can't distract from the absurdity of the British position.
Whatever the rights and wrongs it would be quite a thing for the EU to "sanction" the UK at a time when the said UK has done more than any other European country to come to the assistance of Ukraine. Interesting optics.
Equally quite a thing to pick an unnecessary fight with the EU when the Ukraine conflict demands a united European front. No wonder Putin loves Brexit so much.
Oh give it up already. 🙄
At a time when France, Germany and the EU under its rotating French Presidency is circumventing international sanctions, while British munitions are helping Ukraine win the war, I think the idea that it is Brexit that is on Putin's side can be put in the dustbin of bad takes once and for all. 🤦♂️
The point is that without the UK in the EU, the EU will be dominated by German mercantilist interests, as we have seen. The EU would be taking a much firmer stand against Putin if we were still in it. That is the advantage he has gained ftom Brexit.
The EU always was dominated by German mercantilist interests and by its very nature always will be.
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
I see that anti-prejudice course I booked you on didn't work that well then?
Being disappointed with German mercantilism at a time they're circumventing sanctions on Russia isn't prejudice.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Most of your posts genuinely stink of prejudice. I am not sure where your prejudice extends to, but examples include (but are not ,limited to) simplistic attacks on EU, Germans (both in this case), French, Irish, Roman Catholics, people of faith. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a wizened grumpy old octogenarian who had rarely set foot outside somewhere like a village in North Yorkshire, where you surround yourself with other prejudiced old gits who complain about the world not being how it ought to be and boring everyone senseless with your "wisdom" on how the world would be better if everyone were English, and presumably right wing Tory.
I have no qualms with people of faith.
I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church as a flawed institution and for very good reason.
My view on faith is much like my view on penises. Its fine to have one, its fine to be proud of it, but please don't wave it around in public and especially don't try and shove it down other people's throats uninvited.
"I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church and for very good reason."
Which is? That is, what singles out this one faith tradition for your ire?
Not the faith, the institution.
For a litany of abuses and putting its own interests ahead of the victims of its abuse for decades, something it still hasn't put to rights.
It isn't the only institution on the planet I have a qualm with.
I am sure all of those institutions are quaking in their collective boots at the disdain of such a preeminent keyboard warrior.
Whereas by your own perverted logic your distaste for our present government must make you a preeminent Anglophobe.
Do you realise just how preposterous you're being yet? 🙄
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
As we bemoan the atmosphere that works against so many good people entering politics, we get a closer view on those who are still attracted to public office in the 21st century - and it’s not good.
Comments
Let us hope and maybe try and cajole MPs to ensure that the use of lockdowns is a major feature of the public inquiry.
We need a serious attempt at quantifying the negative/positive aspects more than the glib "the models said if we hadn't lockdown it would be worse".
Edit: I want to see the inquiry take evidence from Sweden for a start.
The only possible hope for the Tories is in Tiverton an LD by election machine malfunction as it's a very large (but proven possible) majority to overturn and in Wakefield Labour being generally crap and infighting.
I think in the former we can expect significant Con to LD voter defection, Wakefield will be won more on low Tory turnout I think than direct switchers. Wakefield will probably be the less apocalyptic result for Canus Major
It takes unanimity to agree to sanctions, so the EU always has and always will operate to its lowest common denominator - which is the German mercantilists.
https://news.sky.com/story/what-is-article-16-and-why-did-the-eu-make-a-u-turn-after-triggering-it-12202915
Article 16 allows us to act unilaterally and retain unilateral actions until the Joint Committee (which we like the EU hold a veto over) agrees a solution.
Scott Morrison was interviewed on it and was very pro. Which automatically sets off my alarm.
Complete, total, unmitigated twat.
I was positive about Germany when they imposed the sanctions. I'm disappointed when the sanctions are circumvented.
That's consistency and integrity, not prejudice. You should be disappointed with such sanction-breaking too.
Better odds today, but a safer bet when we know the candidates in that one?
https://twitter.com/JohnJCrace/status/1526545054575247361
Bone's point seems to be that May was far too focussed on getting ACTUAL agreement (which may have been sustainable). It was only when Johnson promised whatever it took, in bad faith, that he got a deal. The same deal now falling apart. So, let's have another deal like that. 👀 https://twitter.com/PeterBoneUK/status/1526582334836948993
Personally, I am OK with triggering Article 16, so long as it contains a reasonable set of mitigation measures regarding implementation of the TTP for the EU to follow.
If it does not, and we were never serious about being bound by the treaty we signed, then I take a much dimmer view.
"To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.
The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Ourthe near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.
There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.
If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours term.
All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well-known American humanity.
The German Commander."
According to those present when McAuliffe received the German message, he read it, crumpled it into a ball, threw it in a wastepaper basket, and muttered, "Aw, nuts". The officers in McAuliffe's command post were trying to find suitable language for an official reply when Lt. Col. Harry Kinnard suggested that McAuliffe's first response summed up the situation pretty well, and the others agreed. The official reply was typed and delivered by Colonel Joseph Harper, commanding the 327th Glider Infantry, to the German delegation. It was as follows:
"To the German Commander.
NUTS!
The American Commander."
The German major appeared confused and asked Harper what the message meant. Harper said, "In plain English? Go to hell."
The choice of "Nuts!" rather than something earthier was typical for McAuliffe. Captain Vincent Vicari, his personal aide at the time, recalled that "General Mac was the only general I ever knew who did not use profane language. 'Nuts' was part of his normal vocabulary."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_McAuliffe
"Question 1. You have to guess the question; you also have to guess what is the subject of the examination. Write an essay on this topic. You have three hours. Whatever you answer you will be jeered and mocked. If you make a significant error public places will be blown to bits and children will die".
On the EU's side there was a mismatch between the rhetoric about protecting the Good Friday Agreement being the number one priority and the reality that they were prioritising the integrity of the single market, but they signed a treaty that gave us the ability to reprioritise the Good Friday Agreement in line with their rhetoric.
Tory MP arrested for rape and sex assault spanning seven-year period as cops launch investigation
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/18599461/tory-mp-arrested-for-rape/
“One reason continental leaders don’t want to talk about changes amounting to a new treaty is their certain knowledge that the Tories would be dissatisfied again soon enough.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/17/northern-ireland-protocol-brexit-tories-eu?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
With threat of Local Wakefield Labour Party not only not helping Starmer’s parachuted in candidate, but actually standing against him themselves, current 6-1 on Conservative hold I just got I think is a strong bet.
When I won a bet on Shropshire North, Partygate was at its finger jabbing angriest and anger all over media in build up, even the Mail. Right now it doesn’t have the feeling of Boris in trouble or libdems can repeat the huge swing, 15/8 on Conservative hold is value there too imo.
And you don't see how dangerous that is and just encourages terrorism. What deranged person would not think, I have nothing to lose by taking up the armalite like the guys over in NI.
Boris Johnson told Cabinet: "Crime crime crime is what we want to focus on."
https://twitter.com/JackElsom/status/1526517164043382784
You on the other hand have no integrity and are quoting people who are lying and making up fake quotations because they lie through their teeth as they hate Brexit and so do you. 🤦♂️
As has been discussed on here, the protocol had a break clause; and it's perfectly understandable not to want checks on sandwiches moving from Plymouth to Portrush. Indeed that is the Labour Party position also.
For me it is the sheer arrogance and disingenuousness of the govt in agreeing this deal (which clearly and explicitly described the need for checks on sandwiches) only to trigger that break clause months later quoting sandwich checks as being intolerable.
The question of negotiating in good faith is thereby called into question. Will they be found out? Not so far is the answer so why shouldn't they think they can continue doing it.
At least with crime we can shrug and say "huh, criminals, what can you do" when we have no impact.
That do you?
I do have a qualm with the Roman Catholic Church as a flawed institution and for very good reason.
My view on faith is much like my view on penises. Its fine to have one, its fine to be proud of it, but please don't wave it around in public and especially don't try and shove it down other people's throats uninvited.
Boris is listening to me.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1526601955145129985
Which is? That is, what singles out this one faith tradition for your ire?
Scotland has no history of terrorism or militant violence like Northern Ireland so the brutal reality is the UK government can refuse an indyref2 without risk of terrorist retaliation from the SNP in the way they could not impose a hard border in Ireland without the risk of terrorist violence from the IRA, the ex military wing of SF.
The GFA only came about too because of the need to end terrorist violence in NI. You may not like it but that is the reality.
Now of course violence by Scottish Nationalists or Remainers would not guarantee this Tory government listened to them, the UK government defied the IRA for decades but it did ultimately lead to a settlement in NI
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
For a litany of abuses and putting its own interests ahead of the victims of its abuse for decades, something it still hasn't put to rights.
It isn't the only institution on the planet I have a qualm with.
Objecting to the actions of the German government no more makes you prejudiced than objecting to the actions of Boris's government makes you prejudiced.
The German government isn't all Germans. The Roman Catholic Church isn't all Catholics. Vladimir Putin isn't all Russians. The GOP isn't all Americans.
Only a simplistic fool would consider objecting to an institution or its leaders like Boris Johnson, or the GOP, or the German government etc is a prejudice against all of that nation, or all of that faith. That is taking L'état, c'est moi to absurd proportions.
Time that was ended once and for all.
Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Do you realise just how preposterous you're being yet? 🙄
Between 2002-2009
So, somewhat historic. Surely his name will be revealed soon.