There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
Just think of those underpowered vacuum cleaners and it will all become worth it.
It would appear that Boris Johnson does not need to resort to an underpowered vacuum cleaner.
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
The ‘renegotiation’, followed by Cameron’s reaction to it, was what convinced me the EU was not reformable.
Either they thought that Cameron could sell almost nothing, or Cameron had gone in and told them he could sell mostly words rather than positive actions.
The whole thing was as believable as their commitment to CAP reform, for which Blair gave up the rebate. Once the signatures were dry, it was “CAP reform, what CAP reform?”.
I am mildly obsessed with sunshine hours (as weather affects my mood quite a lot, and I am prone to moods)
The USA enjoys vastly more sunshine than Europe. It is one of the reasons I used to think about moving there, but not any more, the American negatives now significantly outweigh the positives (for me, personally. as a Brit)
The ideal one should seek (as a sun lover) is desert-like hours of sunshine but with a fertile and seasonal climate. The eastern Adriatic coast gets quite close to that ideal
Me too (sun hour obsession) once I realised why British winters got me down. It’s not the cold, it’s the gloom.
I’m now looking for a place in Europe that near-replicates the climate I grew up with. I think northern Portugal or Galicia.
Probably rainy, but I don’t mind the rain.
Not keen on rain either, personally (Why, God, was i born in England???) but I do like green hills and trees, I don’t want a desert
Northern Portugal is a good bet (and it is still quite cheap, at least inland). Even if global warming spirals out of control Porto and environs will likely remain pleasantly habitable for the rest of your lifetime
Southern Spain, hmm, not so much
Portuguese food is a bit rubbish tho, once you get beyond the sardines and the cataplana. Galician food is much more inventive
The rain gives you the green hills and trees.
But you want it concentrated in certain seasons and hopefully in short intense bursts
What you don’t want is cool drizzly weeks of British summer
Well, gentle rain soaks into the ground more easily and causes fewer issues with flooding. But it could have the good sense to fall overnight when one is in bed.
I am mildly obsessed with sunshine hours (as weather affects my mood quite a lot, and I am prone to moods)
The USA enjoys vastly more sunshine than Europe. It is one of the reasons I used to think about moving there, but not any more, the American negatives now significantly outweigh the positives (for me, personally. as a Brit)
The ideal one should seek (as a sun lover) is desert-like hours of sunshine but with a fertile and seasonal climate. The eastern Adriatic coast gets quite close to that ideal
Me too (sun hour obsession) once I realised why British winters got me down. It’s not the cold, it’s the gloom.
I’m now looking for a place in Europe that near-replicates the climate I grew up with. I think northern Portugal or Galicia.
Probably rainy, but I don’t mind the rain.
Not keen on rain either, personally (Why, God, was i born in England???) but I do like green hills and trees, I don’t want a desert
Northern Portugal is a good bet (and it is still quite cheap, at least inland). Even if global warming spirals out of control Porto and environs will likely remain pleasantly habitable for the rest of your lifetime
Southern Spain, hmm, not so much
Portuguese food is a bit rubbish tho, once you get beyond the sardines and the cataplana. Galician food is much more inventive
The rain gives you the green hills and trees.
But you want it concentrated in certain seasons and hopefully in short intense bursts
What you don’t want is cool drizzly weeks of British summer
Personally i hate heat, or at least humid heat - anything above about 25-28 degrees i hate - so a forecast of a bit of a cool week in mid July is good news for me.
We are all different.
Well, of course
Some people genuinely love the mild, wet, cool British climate, I’m just not one of them (I wish I was, it would make life easier)
That said, I have never met anyone who loves the dark and gloom of a British winter. The light at 9 and dark by 3.30 stuff. Does anyone enjoy that?? Horrible
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
You believed that?
Yes I did. If they reneged then we could have said "You lied" and left anyway.
Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani who was a figure in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced Wednesday to a year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes.
Parnas, 50, had sought leniency on the grounds that he’d cooperated with the Congressional probe of Trump and his efforts to get the leaders of Ukraine to investigate President Joe Biden’s son.
U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken didn’t give Parnas credit for that assistance, which came only after the Soviet-born businessman was facing criminal charges. But the judge still imposed a sentence lighter than the six years sought by prosecutors.
The judge also ordered Parnas pay $2.3 million in restitution. . . .
The criminal case against Parnas was not directly related to his work acting as a fixer for Giuliani as the former New York City mayor connected with Ukrainian officials and lobbied them to launch an investigation of Biden’s son, Hunter.
Instead, it zeroed in on donations Parnas had illegally made to a number of U.S. politicians using the riches of a wealthy Russian as part of an effort to jump-start a legal recreational-marijuana business. . . .
SSI - This item is something of a corrective, to belief that the paths of Putinism are straightforward.
Rather, more kinks than a high-class West End knocking shop.
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
Thanks.
Just to pick one or two things apart as you consider past decisions and processes.
There is another thing we could have done, which is be part of the EU and ensure that it was clear that the intention was either ultimately to be a European State or emphatically not. In the end the UK population saw through the ambiguity.
The whole FoM, Schengen, Euro, parliament things are fine as long as the single state is the agreed destination. Without this it had be be a hollow dishonest fudge.
I think for the members it remains a hollow dishonest fudge for the same reasons.
Otherwise it had to be our role to ensure honesty and self limitation about aims and to be the stuff of a European Trade Organisation, a local branch of WTO.
That plus the egregious democratic deficit ensured and ensures ultimate disappointment.
By 2016 no good outcomes were available. Of those sub optimal ones joining EFTA/EEA was by miles the best. It still is.
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
You believed that?
Yes I did. If they reneged then we could have said "You lied" and left anyway.
We were always sovereign. Anyone saying otherwise was either a fool or a liar.
Chris Pincher oh dear, oh wait, the embarrassing thing he did was vote for Boris Johnson in the VONC.
The Conservative deputy chief whip has resigned after admitting he has “embarrassed myself and other people”.
In a letter to the prime minister Chris Pincher said: “Last night I drank far too much. I’ve embarrassed myself and other people which is the last thing I want to do and for that I apologise to you and to those concerned.
“I think the right thing to do in the circumstances is for me to resign as deputy chief whip. I owe it to you and the people I’ve caused upset to, to do this.”
The BBC will show highlights of Champions League football for the first time from 2024 after a successful bid in Uefa’s TV rights auction, The Times can reveal.
Amazon Prime will also broadcast some live matches from Uefa’s new-look competition in the UK for the first time with BT Sport retaining the bulk of the TV rights.
The deals are set to be announced by Uefa on Friday and European football’s governing body will benefit from a 15 per cent increase in its income from the UK rights from £1.2 billion for the existing three-year deal to about £1.4 billion from 2024 to 2027, according to sources with knowledge of the negotiations.
The BBC’s package means it will show highlights of Champions League matches on Wednesday nights and will be a coup for the broadcaster which will be able to have a midweek Match of The Day to show clips from the European games, as well as Premier League highlights shows on Saturdays and Sundays.
Sources said the BBC has committed significant resources to bidding for the highlights.
BT Sport is set to form a new joint venture with Warner Bros Discovery, and retaining the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League rights was one of the top priorities for the new venture.
Amazon is set to get the first pick of matches to show live on Tuesday nights and BT Sport will have all the other games and highlights.
The new format of the Champions League means it will expand from 32 to 36 teams under a new “Swiss model” with 189 matches per season compared to the existing 125.
The BBC should be showing much more live sport. I doubt many will be particularly excited about another highlights deal. As it is, anyone with the slightest interest in sport has to subscribe to BT and Sky anyway.
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
I am mildly obsessed with sunshine hours (as weather affects my mood quite a lot, and I am prone to moods)
The USA enjoys vastly more sunshine than Europe. It is one of the reasons I used to think about moving there, but not any more, the American negatives now significantly outweigh the positives (for me, personally. as a Brit)
The ideal one should seek (as a sun lover) is desert-like hours of sunshine but with a fertile and seasonal climate. The eastern Adriatic coast gets quite close to that ideal
Me too (sun hour obsession) once I realised why British winters got me down. It’s not the cold, it’s the gloom.
I’m now looking for a place in Europe that near-replicates the climate I grew up with. I think northern Portugal or Galicia.
Probably rainy, but I don’t mind the rain.
Not keen on rain either, personally (Why, God, was i born in England???) but I do like green hills and trees, I don’t want a desert
Northern Portugal is a good bet (and it is still quite cheap, at least inland). Even if global warming spirals out of control Porto and environs will likely remain pleasantly habitable for the rest of your lifetime
Southern Spain, hmm, not so much
Portuguese food is a bit rubbish tho, once you get beyond the sardines and the cataplana. Galician food is much more inventive
The rain gives you the green hills and trees.
But you want it concentrated in certain seasons and hopefully in short intense bursts
What you don’t want is cool drizzly weeks of British summer
Personally i hate heat, or at least humid heat - anything above about 25-28 degrees i hate - so a forecast of a bit of a cool week in mid July is good news for me.
We are all different.
Well, of course
Some people genuinely love the mild, wet, cool British climate, I’m just not one of them (I wish I was, it would make life easier)
That said, I have never met anyone who loves the dark and gloom of a British winter. The light at 9 and dark by 3.30 stuff. Does anyone enjoy that?? Horrible
Ten years ago I was investigating the idea of buying a modest rural retreat in NZ to spend October-March each year. Nothing came of it, which is perhaps a blessing as the last three years would have been a nightmare. But I was (and remain) attracted to the lifestyle of the arctic tern (aka antarctic tern) which divides its year flitting between the polar regions, enjoying more daylight than any other species.
There are regular updates on this story on RTÉ, who describe it as, "the largest adult safeguarding scandal in NHS history," but I've not seen or heard anything about it in the London media.
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
You believed that?
Yes I did. If they reneged then we could have said "You lied" and left anyway.
Lol. If we'd voted to Remain, the federalists would, quite rightly, have moved quickly to drag us in deeper to a point where leaving would have become unthinkable.
The French Riviera really does have a quite amazing climate: more sunshine hours than almost all of Italy, and within a short trip of fabulous mountain ranges. A quite astoundingly blessed part of the world.
I am mildly obsessed with sunshine hours (as weather affects my mood quite a lot, and I am prone to moods)
The USA enjoys vastly more sunshine than Europe. It is one of the reasons I used to think about moving there, but not any more, the American negatives now significantly outweigh the positives (for me, personally. as a Brit)
The ideal one should seek (as a sun lover) is desert-like hours of sunshine but with a fertile and seasonal climate. The eastern Adriatic coast gets quite close to that ideal
Me too (sun hour obsession) once I realised why British winters got me down. It’s not the cold, it’s the gloom.
I’m now looking for a place in Europe that near-replicates the climate I grew up with. I think northern Portugal or Galicia.
Probably rainy, but I don’t mind the rain.
Not keen on rain either, personally (Why, God, was i born in England???) but I do like green hills and trees, I don’t want a desert
Northern Portugal is a good bet (and it is still quite cheap, at least inland). Even if global warming spirals out of control Porto and environs will likely remain pleasantly habitable for the rest of your lifetime
Southern Spain, hmm, not so much
Portuguese food is a bit rubbish tho, once you get beyond the sardines and the cataplana. Galician food is much more inventive
The rain gives you the green hills and trees.
But you want it concentrated in certain seasons and hopefully in short intense bursts
What you don’t want is cool drizzly weeks of British summer
Personally i hate heat, or at least humid heat - anything above about 25-28 degrees i hate - so a forecast of a bit of a cool week in mid July is good news for me.
We are all different.
Well, of course
Some people genuinely love the mild, wet, cool British climate, I’m just not one of them (I wish I was, it would make life easier)
That said, I have never met anyone who loves the dark and gloom of a British winter. The light at 9 and dark by 3.30 stuff. Does anyone enjoy that?? Horrible
On balance I prefer the climate we have to others, until the tilt of the earth changes and other options become available. The sheer magic of the time from the first aconites to the end of cow parsley, and then wild rose time. Allotments. Fruit. Veg. Apples. Plums. Until the burning of the leaves.
There is indeed little to love about the British winter, and the further north you go the worse it gets. But this conceals a mystery. What Brits love is not winter, but the complicated process, during winter, of keeping it at bay with heat, light, wool and atavistic Christiano-Viking-Saxon-Celtic ritual.
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
"absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope"
Evidence?
See also, how well our infrastructure and services are coping since we discouraged people to come here.
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
You believed that?
Yes I did. If they reneged then we could have said "You lied" and left anyway.
Lol. If we'd voted to Remain, the federalists would, quite rightly, have moved quickly to drag us in deeper to a point where leaving would have become unthinkable.
Not just unthinkable. Impossible without major economic damage.
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
You believed that?
Yes I did. If they reneged then we could have said "You lied" and left anyway.
Lol. If we'd voted to Remain, the federalists would, quite rightly, have moved quickly to drag us in deeper to a point where leaving would have become unthinkable.
Not just unthinkable. Impossible without major economic damage.
I am mildly obsessed with sunshine hours (as weather affects my mood quite a lot, and I am prone to moods)
The USA enjoys vastly more sunshine than Europe. It is one of the reasons I used to think about moving there, but not any more, the American negatives now significantly outweigh the positives (for me, personally. as a Brit)
The ideal one should seek (as a sun lover) is desert-like hours of sunshine but with a fertile and seasonal climate. The eastern Adriatic coast gets quite close to that ideal
Me too (sun hour obsession) once I realised why British winters got me down. It’s not the cold, it’s the gloom.
I’m now looking for a place in Europe that near-replicates the climate I grew up with. I think northern Portugal or Galicia.
Probably rainy, but I don’t mind the rain.
Not keen on rain either, personally (Why, God, was i born in England???) but I do like green hills and trees, I don’t want a desert
Northern Portugal is a good bet (and it is still quite cheap, at least inland). Even if global warming spirals out of control Porto and environs will likely remain pleasantly habitable for the rest of your lifetime
Southern Spain, hmm, not so much
Portuguese food is a bit rubbish tho, once you get beyond the sardines and the cataplana. Galician food is much more inventive
The rain gives you the green hills and trees.
But you want it concentrated in certain seasons and hopefully in short intense bursts
What you don’t want is cool drizzly weeks of British summer
Personally i hate heat, or at least humid heat - anything above about 25-28 degrees i hate - so a forecast of a bit of a cool week in mid July is good news for me.
We are all different.
Well, of course
Some people genuinely love the mild, wet, cool British climate, I’m just not one of them (I wish I was, it would make life easier)
That said, I have never met anyone who loves the dark and gloom of a British winter. The light at 9 and dark by 3.30 stuff. Does anyone enjoy that?? Horrible
I am so weird I like the winter light at 9am thing because I wake with the dawn and most of the time cannot get back to sleep, so a mid summer 4:30am is trying to say the least.
My ideal is:
A good day in September levels of temperature, say a nice balmy 21 degrees.
Dawn at 8am.
Dusk at 7 or 8pm - always ready for a drink once the sun is dropping noticeably.
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
You believed that?
Yes I did. If they reneged then we could have said "You lied" and left anyway.
We were always sovereign. Anyone saying otherwise was either a fool or a liar.
On sancta simplicitas:
"It is important to remember that at present the European Union is not a federation (like the United States of America), nor is it just an international organisation like the United Nations (UN) where governments merely cooperate together. The EU’s member states remain separate independent states that have ‘pooled sovereignty’ in certain policy areas. This is to say that they have decided to work collectively on particular matters."
I am mildly obsessed with sunshine hours (as weather affects my mood quite a lot, and I am prone to moods)
The USA enjoys vastly more sunshine than Europe. It is one of the reasons I used to think about moving there, but not any more, the American negatives now significantly outweigh the positives (for me, personally. as a Brit)
The ideal one should seek (as a sun lover) is desert-like hours of sunshine but with a fertile and seasonal climate. The eastern Adriatic coast gets quite close to that ideal
Me too (sun hour obsession) once I realised why British winters got me down. It’s not the cold, it’s the gloom.
I’m now looking for a place in Europe that near-replicates the climate I grew up with. I think northern Portugal or Galicia.
Probably rainy, but I don’t mind the rain.
Not keen on rain either, personally (Why, God, was i born in England???) but I do like green hills and trees, I don’t want a desert
Northern Portugal is a good bet (and it is still quite cheap, at least inland). Even if global warming spirals out of control Porto and environs will likely remain pleasantly habitable for the rest of your lifetime
Southern Spain, hmm, not so much
Portuguese food is a bit rubbish tho, once you get beyond the sardines and the cataplana. Galician food is much more inventive
The rain gives you the green hills and trees.
But you want it concentrated in certain seasons and hopefully in short intense bursts
What you don’t want is cool drizzly weeks of British summer
Personally i hate heat, or at least humid heat - anything above about 25-28 degrees i hate - so a forecast of a bit of a cool week in mid July is good news for me.
We are all different.
Well, of course
Some people genuinely love the mild, wet, cool British climate, I’m just not one of them (I wish I was, it would make life easier)
That said, I have never met anyone who loves the dark and gloom of a British winter. The light at 9 and dark by 3.30 stuff. Does anyone enjoy that?? Horrible
Oh I think lots of us do. Lighting the stove, winter food, coming in from the cold or wet walk, visiting the pub with an open fire, working outside in the wet or cold and coming in to the warm, etc etc.
Huh. Looks like Ukraine will be exporting electricity to the EU. Surprised by that. I guess domestic Ukrainian demand for electricity must be way down, but the nuclear power plants are still running.
I am mildly obsessed with sunshine hours (as weather affects my mood quite a lot, and I am prone to moods)
The USA enjoys vastly more sunshine than Europe. It is one of the reasons I used to think about moving there, but not any more, the American negatives now significantly outweigh the positives (for me, personally. as a Brit)
The ideal one should seek (as a sun lover) is desert-like hours of sunshine but with a fertile and seasonal climate. The eastern Adriatic coast gets quite close to that ideal
Me too (sun hour obsession) once I realised why British winters got me down. It’s not the cold, it’s the gloom.
I’m now looking for a place in Europe that near-replicates the climate I grew up with. I think northern Portugal or Galicia.
Probably rainy, but I don’t mind the rain.
Not keen on rain either, personally (Why, God, was i born in England???) but I do like green hills and trees, I don’t want a desert
Northern Portugal is a good bet (and it is still quite cheap, at least inland). Even if global warming spirals out of control Porto and environs will likely remain pleasantly habitable for the rest of your lifetime
Southern Spain, hmm, not so much
Portuguese food is a bit rubbish tho, once you get beyond the sardines and the cataplana. Galician food is much more inventive
The rain gives you the green hills and trees.
But you want it concentrated in certain seasons and hopefully in short intense bursts
What you don’t want is cool drizzly weeks of British summer
Personally i hate heat, or at least humid heat - anything above about 25-28 degrees i hate - so a forecast of a bit of a cool week in mid July is good news for me.
We are all different.
Well, of course
Some people genuinely love the mild, wet, cool British climate, I’m just not one of them (I wish I was, it would make life easier)
That said, I have never met anyone who loves the dark and gloom of a British winter. The light at 9 and dark by 3.30 stuff. Does anyone enjoy that?? Horrible
On balance I prefer the climate we have to others, until the tilt of the earth changes and other options become available. The sheer magic of the time from the first aconites to the end of cow parsley, and then wild rose time. Allotments. Fruit. Veg. Apples. Plums. Until the burning of the leaves.
There is indeed little to love about the British winter, and the further north you go the worse it gets. But this conceals a mystery. What Brits love is not winter, but the complicated process, during winter, of keeping it at bay with heat, light, wool and atavistic Christiano-Viking-Saxon-Celtic ritual.
There are regular updates on this story on RTÉ, who describe it as, "the largest adult safeguarding scandal in NHS history," but I've not seen or heard anything about it in the London media.
It is in N Ireland so the GB media do not really care all that much...
And not even the NHS as the LOndon media understand it. It's separate in Scotland and always has been: not sure about Wales: NI is a far off country of which they know little.
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
Only because successive UKGs couldn't be arsed to get their act togethjer on identity cards, benefits entitlements, and so on.
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
"absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope"
Evidence?
See also, how well our infrastructure and services are coping since we discouraged people to come here.
6m applications for the EU settlement scheme.
And yes, you are right some of our services are suffering from a lack of almost infinite labour but the census shows our population is still increasing. We need to adjust to making better use of what we have. And that is not going to be easy, especially in a country apparently obsessed with refighting previous battles to little purpose ((other than some perceived political advantage to our floundering government).
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
You believed that?
Yes I did. If they reneged then we could have said "You lied" and left anyway.
Lol. If we'd voted to Remain, the federalists would, quite rightly, have moved quickly to drag us in deeper to a point where leaving would have become unthinkable.
Not just unthinkable. Impossible without major economic damage.
"Boris Johnson's deputy chief whip has resigned over an allegation of "groping", Sky News understands.
Chris Pincher said he had drunk "far too much" and "embarrassing myself and other people" on a night out. The Conservative MP for Tamworth wrote to the prime minister to explain his decision to stand down."
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
Only because successive UKGs couldn't be arsed to get their act togethjer on identity cards, benefits entitlements, and so on.
Possibly, we certainly made very little effort to maximise the undoubted advantages of membership (other than arguably in the City of London). But maybe we just didn't want to live that way.
Thought that under the British parliamentary system, one job of party whips in HoC is to curb and limit bad behavior by "friends" honorable or otherwise?
NOT to participate in and expand upon it.
Yet another example of Boris Johnson's success at revolutionizing British politics, blow by blow?
"Boris Johnson's deputy chief whip has resigned over an allegation of "groping", Sky News understands.
Chris Pincher said he had drunk "far too much" and "embarrassing myself and other people" on a night out. The Conservative MP for Tamworth wrote to the prime minister to explain his decision to stand down."
Thought that under the British parliamentary system, one job of party whips in HoC is to curb and limit bad behavior by "friends" honorable or otherwise?
NOT to participate in and expand upon it.
Yet another example of Boris Johnson's success at revolutionizing British politics, blow by blow?
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
"absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope"
Evidence?
See also, how well our infrastructure and services are coping since we discouraged people to come here.
6m applications for the EU settlement scheme.
And yes, you are right some of our services are suffering from a lack of almost infinite labour but the census shows our population is still increasing. We need to adjust to making better use of what we have. And that is not going to be easy, especially in a country apparently obsessed with refighting previous battles to little purpose ((other than some perceived political advantage to our floundering government).
Quite correct. Is it really because of Brexit alone that a population nearly 2 million larger than in Referendum year can't fill vacancies? It cannot, as a matter of sheer maths, be a shortage of population alone.
Might it be that a period of lazy domestic employment practices/training/prioritising due to the easy supply of cheap labour has unbalanced our society and economy?
The BBC will show highlights of Champions League football for the first time from 2024 after a successful bid in Uefa’s TV rights auction, The Times can reveal.
Amazon Prime will also broadcast some live matches from Uefa’s new-look competition in the UK for the first time with BT Sport retaining the bulk of the TV rights.
The deals are set to be announced by Uefa on Friday and European football’s governing body will benefit from a 15 per cent increase in its income from the UK rights from £1.2 billion for the existing three-year deal to about £1.4 billion from 2024 to 2027, according to sources with knowledge of the negotiations.
The BBC’s package means it will show highlights of Champions League matches on Wednesday nights and will be a coup for the broadcaster which will be able to have a midweek Match of The Day to show clips from the European games, as well as Premier League highlights shows on Saturdays and Sundays.
Sources said the BBC has committed significant resources to bidding for the highlights.
BT Sport is set to form a new joint venture with Warner Bros Discovery, and retaining the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League rights was one of the top priorities for the new venture.
Amazon is set to get the first pick of matches to show live on Tuesday nights and BT Sport will have all the other games and highlights.
The new format of the Champions League means it will expand from 32 to 36 teams under a new “Swiss model” with 189 matches per season compared to the existing 125.
The BBC should be showing much more live sport. I doubt many will be particularly excited about another highlights deal. As it is, anyone with the slightest interest in sport has to subscribe to BT and Sky anyway.
Out of curiosity, when was last time that a Whip was denied the whip?
All sounds pretty damn kinky to us clueless colonials. Likely one reason (albeit unmentioned) we went our own misbegotten way just under 246 years ago.
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
"absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope"
Evidence?
See also, how well our infrastructure and services are coping since we discouraged people to come here.
6m applications for the EU settlement scheme.
And yes, you are right some of our services are suffering from a lack of almost infinite labour but the census shows our population is still increasing. We need to adjust to making better use of what we have. And that is not going to be easy, especially in a country apparently obsessed with refighting previous battles to little purpose ((other than some perceived political advantage to our floundering government).
Quite correct. Is it really because of Brexit alone that a population nearly 2 million larger than in Referendum year can't fill vacancies? It cannot, as a matter of sheer maths, be a shortage of population alone.
Might it be that a period of lazy domestic employment practices/training/prioritising due to the easy supply of cheap labour has unbalanced our society and economy?
Undoubtedly. But there is no point in moaning about it or lamenting it. It is the government's job to try and do something about it. Boost training by tax incentives. Reinvent our now catastrophic college system so that it is focused on the jobs actually available locally. Encouraging investment (in fairness Sunak has done a bit on this but not nearly enough given the backlog). Identify infrastructure deficiencies that are inhibiting growth (the answer to both Gatwick and Heathrow was YES). Generally stop faffing about.
The problem with Brexit is not the loss of club membership, It is that our government is still doing none of the hard work that needed done in or out.
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
"absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope"
Evidence?
See also, how well our infrastructure and services are coping since we discouraged people to come here.
6m applications for the EU settlement scheme.
And yes, you are right some of our services are suffering from a lack of almost infinite labour but the census shows our population is still increasing. We need to adjust to making better use of what we have. And that is not going to be easy, especially in a country apparently obsessed with refighting previous battles to little purpose ((other than some perceived political advantage to our floundering government).
Quite correct. Is it really because of Brexit alone that a population nearly 2 million larger than in Referendum year can't fill vacancies? It cannot, as a matter of sheer maths, be a shortage of population alone.
Might it be that a period of lazy domestic employment practices/training/prioritising due to the easy supply of cheap labour has unbalanced our society and economy?
Not always cheap labour but already trained and qualified labour, from bricklayers and electricians through to doctors and curry chefs.
The BBC will show highlights of Champions League football for the first time from 2024 after a successful bid in Uefa’s TV rights auction, The Times can reveal.
Amazon Prime will also broadcast some live matches from Uefa’s new-look competition in the UK for the first time with BT Sport retaining the bulk of the TV rights.
The deals are set to be announced by Uefa on Friday and European football’s governing body will benefit from a 15 per cent increase in its income from the UK rights from £1.2 billion for the existing three-year deal to about £1.4 billion from 2024 to 2027, according to sources with knowledge of the negotiations.
The BBC’s package means it will show highlights of Champions League matches on Wednesday nights and will be a coup for the broadcaster which will be able to have a midweek Match of The Day to show clips from the European games, as well as Premier League highlights shows on Saturdays and Sundays.
Sources said the BBC has committed significant resources to bidding for the highlights.
BT Sport is set to form a new joint venture with Warner Bros Discovery, and retaining the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League rights was one of the top priorities for the new venture.
Amazon is set to get the first pick of matches to show live on Tuesday nights and BT Sport will have all the other games and highlights.
The new format of the Champions League means it will expand from 32 to 36 teams under a new “Swiss model” with 189 matches per season compared to the existing 125.
The BBC should be showing much more live sport. I doubt many will be particularly excited about another highlights deal. As it is, anyone with the slightest interest in sport has to subscribe to BT and Sky anyway.
And Amazon Prime from 2024.
I already have that but their coverage of the Premier League is so unbearably rubbish I try to avoid watching it
Boris Johnson returns after 8 days abroad to face questions of why put a man in charge of party discipline who’d already been forced to quit over allegations of sexual misconduct, only for him to quit a second time over allegations of sexual misconduct. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-tory-whip-chris-pincher-27370244.amp
I am mildly obsessed with sunshine hours (as weather affects my mood quite a lot, and I am prone to moods)
The USA enjoys vastly more sunshine than Europe. It is one of the reasons I used to think about moving there, but not any more, the American negatives now significantly outweigh the positives (for me, personally. as a Brit)
The ideal one should seek (as a sun lover) is desert-like hours of sunshine but with a fertile and seasonal climate. The eastern Adriatic coast gets quite close to that ideal
Me too (sun hour obsession) once I realised why British winters got me down. It’s not the cold, it’s the gloom.
I’m now looking for a place in Europe that near-replicates the climate I grew up with. I think northern Portugal or Galicia.
Probably rainy, but I don’t mind the rain.
Not keen on rain either, personally (Why, God, was i born in England???) but I do like green hills and trees, I don’t want a desert
Northern Portugal is a good bet (and it is still quite cheap, at least inland). Even if global warming spirals out of control Porto and environs will likely remain pleasantly habitable for the rest of your lifetime
Southern Spain, hmm, not so much
Portuguese food is a bit rubbish tho, once you get beyond the sardines and the cataplana. Galician food is much more inventive
The rain gives you the green hills and trees.
But you want it concentrated in certain seasons and hopefully in short intense bursts
What you don’t want is cool drizzly weeks of British summer
Personally i hate heat, or at least humid heat - anything above about 25-28 degrees i hate - so a forecast of a bit of a cool week in mid July is good news for me.
We are all different.
Well, of course
Some people genuinely love the mild, wet, cool British climate, I’m just not one of them (I wish I was, it would make life easier)
That said, I have never met anyone who loves the dark and gloom of a British winter. The light at 9 and dark by 3.30 stuff. Does anyone enjoy that?? Horrible
On balance I prefer the climate we have to others, until the tilt of the earth changes and other options become available. The sheer magic of the time from the first aconites to the end of cow parsley, and then wild rose time. Allotments. Fruit. Veg. Apples. Plums. Until the burning of the leaves.
There is indeed little to love about the British winter, and the further north you go the worse it gets. But this conceals a mystery. What Brits love is not winter, but the complicated process, during winter, of keeping it at bay with heat, light, wool and atavistic Christiano-Viking-Saxon-Celtic ritual.
Beautifully phrased! You almost make me want to live in Britain for the rest of my life
You do touch on a truth, as well. We Brits have constructed any number of things to make our horrible winter tolerable, from cosy pubs to throngs at wintry sports grounds to the Bacchic palaver of pre-Christmas to Anglican evensong - at its best on a winter’s dusk, as Eliot observed. A roast dinner after a crisp winter walk across frosted English fields!
And THAT is what was taken from us, in lockdown 3. All of it. No wonder I nearly killed myself
Boris Johnson returns after 8 days abroad to face questions of why put a man in charge of party discipline who’d already been forced to quit over allegations of sexual misconduct, only for him to quit a second time over allegations of sexual misconduct. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-tory-whip-chris-pincher-27370244.amp
I would guess it is because Boris is an extremely poor judge of character, but it could be that maybe he just does not give a d*mn
There is a lot of whingeing today from the pro-Democrats here as well as the "Good v Evil" narrative going on so let me offer a riposte.
As @Alistair - a poster whom I don't share many views on at all - said, there are many ways to stage a coup. You can have armed force but you can equally have the A Very British Coup style. You can also have the coup via the legal system type.
The same types who are whingeing here about what the SC is doing are the same ones who completely ignored Democrats in swing states using their advantage in the legal system to push through a big loosening of voting procedures under the cover of the pandemic. In some cases, eg Pennsylvania, the courts specifically overrode the legislatures. Post-election, some of these measures were found to be illegal eg in Wisconsin but, by then, it was too late. In addition, we had the 'Zuck Bucks', nominally neutral but where much larger amounts were pushed into Democrat areas in swing states.
You didn't care about the courts then overriding the democratic system or the influence of billionaires' money then because it suited your own side and agenda. Your outrage is generated by the fact it's not your side winning in these cases, not the actual principle.
Which leads onto the next point. The real threat to the US is not the GOP but the thinking displayed on here that it is "Good vs Evil", Black v White when it comes to this matter when actually it's very much shades of Grey. Both sides are guilty of trying to rig the system for their benefit (the Democrats in yesterday's primaries actually put money into GOP primaries to support hardline conservative candidates whom they thought easier to beat). It will be the idea that one side is right and the other is wrong that will destroy US democracy and you are all showing today how and why it's such a danger.
How exactly is letting people who are eligible to vote, vote, undemocratic?
The GOP michigan senate report into election integrity found nothing.
Are they in on the conspiracy theories you are peddling as well?
I'm sure you will have no problems stating them since you are so confident.
Or is this like when you and a fair few others were saying that the Hunter Biden laptop thing was a conspiracy theory? Didn't really see you admit you were wrong there. Lost your voice did you
So you believe Hunter Biden flew half way across the country to get his laptop repaired in a random shop?
The question was never "is that his laptop"
The question was "what was the chain of custody, has it been tampered with".
Thisnis your nornal peformative bollocks where younrry and delibertly cobfuse issues.
Like with your tiresome attempts to conflate the Steele Dossier with the Russia Investigation.
Oh dear Alistair, you have to do better than that. The whole thing at the start was why would he drop off his laptop. It's being accepted now it was his laptop, so now it's gone onto "but how do we know it's his e-mails".
How about this? It might be his laptop has been tampered with. But it might be those were his e-mails. Why not just follow the evidence?
You seem to have a bit of a conspiracy mindset yourself.
Conspiracies are only a subject for mockery and scorn when they're alleged against people one likes, didn’t you realise that? When they're alleged against people one dislikes, there's no smoke without fire and we must get to the bottom of this.
Just in case there is any doubt here is a post I made around the time the Hunter Biden Latpop story coming live:
In it I posit 1) the laptop contained real Hunter Biden documents 2) that if it revealed verifiable criminality then it is irrelevant how the dos were obtained 3) that the source of the laptop was so compromised and so credibility shredding if revelaed that they needed a cover story, any cover story 4) as a result the custody chain is so borked that you would have to be totally wary of fake docs in the mix.
I dug up this post because once again MrEd is implying I've somehow changed my tune over time because I can't handle THE TRUTH about HARD HITTING FACTS that are going to blow this case WIDE OPEN.
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
Yes, Dave's Deal was the most accomplished piece of British statesmanship in probably half a century. Alas it was rubbished by people who were cynical about British capabilities and British clout (though not so cynical that they didn't think some bloke called Boris Johnson would go on to work post-Brexit miracles).
It is slightly depressing to read the same old claptrap wheeled out.
No, a vote to Remain did not entail getting sucked ever deeper into the EU. That’s pure whatiffery.
CAP might have been crap (why?), but the British farmer did OK and food standards/quality improved enormously inside the EU. Both farmers and fishers believe they are now worse off.
Immigration was large-scale but was an absolute economic boon. Migrants tended to be more skilled, less welfare-dependent, and helped address the demographic time bomb.
The issue was that successive governments were not up-front about it, refused to use domestic control levers, and were happy to bank the upsides and ignore the impact of cultural change on various communities.
Off the top of my head, Allegra Stratton, Matt Hancock, Neil Parish & Chris Pincher have resigned from a government led by a man who has repeatedly behaved far, far worse... https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1542598016691015681
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
"absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope"
Evidence?
See also, how well our infrastructure and services are coping since we discouraged people to come here.
6m applications for the EU settlement scheme.
And yes, you are right some of our services are suffering from a lack of almost infinite labour but the census shows our population is still increasing. We need to adjust to making better use of what we have. And that is not going to be easy, especially in a country apparently obsessed with refighting previous battles to little purpose ((other than some perceived political advantage to our floundering government).
Quite correct. Is it really because of Brexit alone that a population nearly 2 million larger than in Referendum year can't fill vacancies? It cannot, as a matter of sheer maths, be a shortage of population alone.
Might it be that a period of lazy domestic employment practices/training/prioritising due to the easy supply of cheap labour has unbalanced our society and economy?
Undoubtedly. But there is no point in moaning about it or lamenting it. It is the government's job to try and do something about it. Boost training by tax incentives. Reinvent our now catastrophic college system so that it is focused on the jobs actually available locally. Encouraging investment (in fairness Sunak has done a bit on this but not nearly enough given the backlog). Identify infrastructure deficiencies that are inhibiting growth (the answer to both Gatwick and Heathrow was YES). Generally stop faffing about.
The problem with Brexit is not the loss of club membership, It is that our government is still doing none of the hard work that needed done in or out.
Except now it is getting harder and harder to blame the Brussels Bogeyman!
It’s the second time that Pincher has quit the Tory whips office after he allegedly made an unwanted sexual pass at a former Olympic rower while wearing a bathrobe.
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
Only because successive UKGs couldn't be arsed to get their act togethjer on identity cards, benefits entitlements, and so on.
Possibly, we certainly made very little effort to maximise the undoubted advantages of membership (other than arguably in the City of London). But maybe we just didn't want to live that way.
There is long-standing view - certainly in left-wing critiques of UK economic policy - that the City of London has essentially fucked the overall economy time and time again.
There's a lot (and I mean a lot) about the way we have gone about leaving the EU and the post-EU arrangements which in my view which has been stupid, short-sighted or so riddled with arcane notions of sovereignty, "leverage" and seeking dubious advantage as to be borderline malevolent.
All of that said, we couldn't go on as we were - there were only two credible positions, either we were enthusiastically members which meant adopting the Euro, Schengen and all the rest which we could have done (I'm NOT saying "should") and which in turn would have altered the dynamic of the EU or we stood on the outside wishing it well, looking for a mutually beneficial economic and trading relationship but not getting politically involved.
Instead, incredibly, we did neither. We embarked on a half-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching, griping, moaning membership - endlessly complaining and rarely, if ever, trying to set the agenda. That was the fault of successive Governments over 50 years - it's little wonder both the British people and the EU got fed up.
So we're out and we have to make it work and we have to ask the hard questions about our role in the world which we've probably dodged since 1945 (certainly since Suez and arguably fudged during our EU membership).
While I would not wish the human misery and suffering of the Ukraine on anyone, one by-product has been to re-energise "the West" with a new sense of purpose which arguably it had lacked since the USSR collapsed. It has given the UK a new sense of a role in the western alliance and has re-energised NATO. That said, the world isn't either Europe or NATO and we have to be an economic power in Latin America, the Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent all areas of economic potential and challenge.
The failure to really flesh out what "Global Britain" means (beyond a cheap slogan) has left the future uncertain - we can't just be a place for the mega-wealthy to buy houses, drive fast cars and shop. Our lot cannot just be a servants of mega-wealth yet the pandemic has also set in train other forces.
As I argued last night, the pandemic forced some to question the viability of their work-life existence and for them a life without work isn't the nightmare we were conditioned to believe. Indeed, there are those who have moved beyond the old adage of "you work to live, you don't live to work" and especially if materially capable and able have turned their back on the working life in search of something else.
The post-work world is one which I think will develop and grow in the next few decades as more and more seek a life meaning beyond the "eat, work, sleep, repeat" mantra of past decades.
I don't remember the EU being especially fed up, and I've always read a lot of Continental papers. Frankly they didn't talk about Britain nearly as much as most people imagine. Even among the leaders, they were used to having members with off-centre views and some - Hungary, Poland - worry them much more than the UK ever did.
I think we got fed up with ourselves, as you describe, feeling that half-hearted membership was just tiresome. But IMO we could have continued it indefinitely with few serious Continental complaints. It wasn't especially broken, and I think we made a mistake in thinking we had to leave or embrace everything. Muddling through was a perfectly adequate strategy which arguably was acftually our best bet.
People say that Cameron's renegotiation was terrible, but I don't think it was at all
"What Cameron wanted: a declaration that the treaty motto of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” did not apply to the UK. EU leaders had already agreed a special formula of wording in June 2014 that not all member states were on the road to integration, but Cameron wanted something stronger.
What he’s got: Much more emphatic language, stressing that the UK is not on the road to deeper integration. “It is recognised that the United Kingdom ... is not committed to further political integration in the European Union ... References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”"
This was brilliant. We could have stayed in the EU without joining the Euro or Schengen and rejected anything else that led to "Ever closer union". But we threw it all away.
Yes, Dave's Deal was the most accomplished piece of British statesmanship in probably half a century. Alas it was rubbished by people who were cynical about British capabilities and British clout (though not so cynical that they didn't think some bloke called Boris Johnson would go on to work post-Brexit miracles).
It really wasn’t. It was a slap-dash gimmick, like much of what passes for British policy since late era Brown.
Few years back, a Washington State senator (a Democrat) was forced to resign after one of this, er, staff alleged that they he retaliated against her for ending their long-standing affair.
Which according to her, began when he was a San Juan County commissioner, and she worked in his office at the courthouse. Where, according to her, they had several close encounters of the carnal kind.
After this all went public, the San Juan County commissioners responded by ordering their former colleague's office to be fumigated - pronto.
Question - What is situation re: the PM's former office at the Foreign Office? AND are cleaning, er, staff entitled to hazardous duty pay? OR at least an extra allocation of Lysol (or UK equivalent)?
Hmm.... if things go tits up I can think of a lot more dangerous places starting with central London. Kaliningrad isn't worth a nuke.
Places likely to start a war, on the other hand...
Oh, Kaliningrad is definitely worth a nuke. The whole place is one massive military base - including nuclear submarines, planes, missiles and long-range air defences.
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
Only because successive UKGs couldn't be arsed to get their act togethjer on identity cards, benefits entitlements, and so on.
Possibly, we certainly made very little effort to maximise the undoubted advantages of membership (other than arguably in the City of London). But maybe we just didn't want to live that way.
There is long-standing view - certainly in left-wing critiques of UK economic policy - that the City of London has essentially fucked the overall economy time and time again.
A rather different point but an interesting one. I think its mixed.
The proportion of our profits taken by financial services has been ludicrous since at least the turn of the century, arguably longer. They gouge ridiculous salaries for services that are useful but not economically central to what we do. They also undoubtedly encourage short termism, working for very short term excellence at the cost of long term investment. The fact that they do this despite the bulk of their funds coming from long term investors like pension schemes is absurd but they need to stand out in the league tables.
It is clear from the US that it doesn't have to work that way. They are much more open to risk and capital growth rather than screaming about the dividends. A company growing in the way that Amazon did is simply unimaginable in the UK, to our detriment.
And yet, without their foreign earnings and the tax they pay we would have a signficantly lower standard of living. Tricky. Its a bit like the answer to the question of what is the best road to Dublin (and don't ask JRM)?
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
"absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope"
Evidence?
See also, how well our infrastructure and services are coping since we discouraged people to come here.
6m applications for the EU settlement scheme.
And yes, you are right some of our services are suffering from a lack of almost infinite labour but the census shows our population is still increasing. We need to adjust to making better use of what we have. And that is not going to be easy, especially in a country apparently obsessed with refighting previous battles to little purpose ((other than some perceived political advantage to our floundering government).
Quite correct. Is it really because of Brexit alone that a population nearly 2 million larger than in Referendum year can't fill vacancies? It cannot, as a matter of sheer maths, be a shortage of population alone.
Might it be that a period of lazy domestic employment practices/training/prioritising due to the easy supply of cheap labour has unbalanced our society and economy?
Undoubtedly. But there is no point in moaning about it or lamenting it. It is the government's job to try and do something about it. Boost training by tax incentives. Reinvent our now catastrophic college system so that it is focused on the jobs actually available locally. Encouraging investment (in fairness Sunak has done a bit on this but not nearly enough given the backlog). Identify infrastructure deficiencies that are inhibiting growth (the answer to both Gatwick and Heathrow was YES). Generally stop faffing about.
The problem with Brexit is not the loss of club membership, It is that our government is still doing none of the hard work that needed done in or out.
Except now it is getting harder and harder to blame the Brussels Bogeyman!
Looks like a rock solid Tory seat. 20,000 majority over Labour and the Lib Dems nowhere. So in a By-election Labour would probably win easily
Former constituency of . . . wait for it . . . Sir Robert Peel.
Who was author of the famed Tamworth Manifesto, "widely credited by historians as having laid down the principles upon which the modern British Conservative Party is based" (as per wiki).
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
Only because successive UKGs couldn't be arsed to get their act togethjer on identity cards, benefits entitlements, and so on.
Possibly, we certainly made very little effort to maximise the undoubted advantages of membership (other than arguably in the City of London). But maybe we just didn't want to live that way.
There is long-standing view - certainly in left-wing critiques of UK economic policy - that the City of London has essentially fucked the overall economy time and time again.
A rather different point but an interesting one. I think its mixed.
The proportion of our profits taken by financial services has been ludicrous since at least the turn of the century, arguably longer. They gouge ridiculous salaries for services that are useful but not economically central to what we do. They also undoubtedly encourage short termism, working for very short term excellence at the cost of long term investment. The fact that they do this despite the bulk of their funds coming from long term investors like pension schemes is absurd but they need to stand out in the league tables.
It is clear from the US that it doesn't have to work that way. They are much more open to risk and capital growth rather than screaming about the dividends. A company growing in the way that Amazon did is simply unimaginable in the UK, to our detriment.
And yet, without their foreign earnings and the tax they pay we would have a significantly lower standard of living. Tricky. Its a bit like the answer to the question of what is the best road to Dublin (and don't ask JRM)?
This accusation is roughly that the City of London underfunds the domestic economy and therefore less (or no) Amazons can get off the ground full-stop.
I don’t think American banks are any less short-term, but American consumers invest in American stocks.
Brits invest in housing, and foreign commodities (grossly simplifying).
Would think there would be pressure on the Euro too, in that case.
As it is the ONS is saying treat the figures with caution because of "discontinuities" arising from changes in the way these things are counted. And Sterling was up against the Euro today (for the first time in a few days, admittedly).
I am mildly obsessed with sunshine hours (as weather affects my mood quite a lot, and I am prone to moods)
The USA enjoys vastly more sunshine than Europe. It is one of the reasons I used to think about moving there, but not any more, the American negatives now significantly outweigh the positives (for me, personally. as a Brit)
The ideal one should seek (as a sun lover) is desert-like hours of sunshine but with a fertile and seasonal climate. The eastern Adriatic coast gets quite close to that ideal
Me too (sun hour obsession) once I realised why British winters got me down. It’s not the cold, it’s the gloom.
I’m now looking for a place in Europe that near-replicates the climate I grew up with. I think northern Portugal or Galicia.
Probably rainy, but I don’t mind the rain.
Not keen on rain either, personally (Why, God, was i born in England???) but I do like green hills and trees, I don’t want a desert
Northern Portugal is a good bet (and it is still quite cheap, at least inland). Even if global warming spirals out of control Porto and environs will likely remain pleasantly habitable for the rest of your lifetime
Southern Spain, hmm, not so much
Portuguese food is a bit rubbish tho, once you get beyond the sardines and the cataplana. Galician food is much more inventive
The rain gives you the green hills and trees.
But you want it concentrated in certain seasons and hopefully in short intense bursts
What you don’t want is cool drizzly weeks of British summer
Personally i hate heat, or at least humid heat - anything above about 25-28 degrees i hate - so a forecast of a bit of a cool week in mid July is good news for me.
We are all different.
Well, of course
Some people genuinely love the mild, wet, cool British climate, I’m just not one of them (I wish I was, it would make life easier)
That said, I have never met anyone who loves the dark and gloom of a British winter. The light at 9 and dark by 3.30 stuff. Does anyone enjoy that?? Horrible
On balance I prefer the climate we have to others, until the tilt of the earth changes and other options become available. The sheer magic of the time from the first aconites to the end of cow parsley, and then wild rose time. Allotments. Fruit. Veg. Apples. Plums. Until the burning of the leaves.
There is indeed little to love about the British winter, and the further north you go the worse it gets. But this conceals a mystery. What Brits love is not winter, but the complicated process, during winter, of keeping it at bay with heat, light, wool and atavistic Christiano-Viking-Saxon-Celtic ritual.
Beautifully phrased! You almost make me want to live in Britain for the rest of my life
You do touch on a truth, as well. We Brits have constructed any number of things to make our horrible winter tolerable, from cosy pubs
to throngs at wintry sports grounds to the Bacchic palaver of pre-Christmas to Anglican
evensong - at its best on a winter’s dusk, as Eliot observed. A roast dinner after a crisp winter
walk across frosted English fields!
And THAT is what was taken from us, in
lockdown 3. All of it. No wonder I nearly killed myself
Yes, the closure of pubs in winter here was a form of national cruelty that should never be contemplated again. The second big lockdown, during the dark months, was a prolonged sentence of deep misery that drove many to the brink.
Hmm.... if things go tits up I can think of a lot more dangerous places starting with central London. Kaliningrad isn't worth a nuke.
Places likely to start a war, on the other hand...
Oh, Kaliningrad is definitely worth a nuke. The whole place is one massive military base - including nuclear submarines, planes, missiles and long-range air defences.
Ok. You just wonder what sort of F****** idiot thought that having a small piece of Russia separated from the rest of the country surrounded by newly independent fledgling states was a good idea. I mean, what could go wrong with that?
Would think there would be pressure on the Euro too, in that case.
As it is the ONS is saying treat the figures with caution because of "discontinuities" arising from changes in the way these things are counted. And Sterling was up against the Euro today (for the first time in a few days, admittedly).
Pincher is 52 years old. And he's still getting so drunk that he loses self control, ends up groping others (allegedly), and then has to resign. What is wrong with these people? There's been quite a few of them lately, mainly male Tories (Parish, Roberts, Warburton, Elphicke, Griffiths, Green - off the top of my head), who just don't seem to have grown up.
It's almost as if they have an immature, man-child role model who is himself sexually incontinent.
Meanwhile though… No10 and a senior downing street source describing Chris Pincher as “a loyal Conservative who recognises that he behaved badly, and confirmed that as things stand he would face no further action and keep the party whip.” https://twitter.com/ionewells/status/1542605326259740672
It is slightly depressing to read the same old claptrap wheeled out.
No, a vote to Remain did not entail getting sucked ever deeper into the EU. That’s pure whatiffery.
CAP might have been crap (why?), but the British farmer did OK and food standards/quality improved enormously inside the EU. Both farmers and fishers believe they are now worse off.
Immigration was large-scale but was an absolute economic boon. Migrants tended to be more skilled, less welfare-dependent, and helped address the demographic time bomb.
The issue was that successive governments were not up-front about it, refused to use domestic control levers, and were happy to bank the upsides and ignore the impact of cultural change on various communities.
Be careful making posts like that - people might get the idea that Brexit is a bad thing!
Pincher is 52 years old. And he's still getting so drunk that he loses self control, ends up groping others (allegedly), and then has to resign. What is wrong with these people? There's been quite a few of them lately, mainly male Tories (Parish, Roberts, Warburton, Elphicke, Griffiths, Green - off the top of my head), who just don't seem to have grown up.
It's almost as if they have an immature, man-child role model who is himself sexually incontinent.
Would think there would be pressure on the Euro too, in that case.
As it is the ONS is saying treat the figures with caution because of "discontinuities" arising from changes in the way these things are counted. And Sterling was up against the Euro today (for the first time in a few days, admittedly).
As always with the Brexit obsessives we only get one side of the story.
Hmm.... if things go tits up I can think of a lot more dangerous places starting with central London. Kaliningrad isn't worth a nuke.
Places likely to start a war, on the other hand...
Oh, Kaliningrad is definitely worth a nuke. The whole place is one massive military base - including nuclear submarines, planes, missiles and long-range air defences.
Ok. You just wonder what sort of F****** idiot thought that having a small piece of Russia separated from the rest of the country surrounded by newly independent fledgling states was a good idea. I mean, what could go wrong with that?
It's Konigsberg and should be German really, or ceded to Poland or Lithuania as part of the post WWII settlement.
Instead, Stalin turned in into a totally contrived Russian colony.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1542565175877943296 Fun fact: Russians use Swedish equipment to produce the nuclear warheads. So if Sweden is indeed on the Russian nuke map, that's ironic. Unlike Germany though Sweden has been very open about its involvement in the Putin's rearmament program
Let’s face it, even Cameron didn’t pretend that his renegotiation amounted to a ball of chalk. Had it done so it would have formed an important strand of the debate but it barely featured.
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
Only because successive UKGs couldn't be arsed to get their act togethjer on identity cards, benefits entitlements, and so on.
Possibly, we certainly made very little effort to maximise the undoubted advantages of membership (other than arguably in the City of London). But maybe we just didn't want to live that way.
There is long-standing view - certainly in left-wing critiques of UK economic policy - that the City of London has essentially fucked the overall economy time and time again.
A rather different point but an interesting one. I think its mixed.
The proportion of our profits taken by financial services has been ludicrous since at least the turn of the century, arguably longer. They gouge ridiculous salaries for services that are useful but not economically central to what we do. They also undoubtedly encourage short termism, working for very short term excellence at the cost of long term investment. The fact that they do this despite the bulk of their funds coming from long term investors like pension schemes is absurd but they need to stand out in the league tables.
It is clear from the US that it doesn't have to work that way. They are much more open to risk and capital growth rather than screaming about the dividends. A company growing in the way that Amazon did is simply unimaginable in the UK, to our detriment.
And yet, without their foreign earnings and the tax they pay we would have a significantly lower standard of living. Tricky. Its a bit like the answer to the question of what is the best road to Dublin (and don't ask JRM)?
This accusation is roughly that the City of London underfunds the domestic economy and therefore less (or no) Amazons can get off the ground full-stop.
I don’t think American banks are any less short-term, but American consumers invest in American stocks.
Brits invest in housing, and foreign commodities (grossly simplifying).
Look how many unicorns the US has created compared to us though (although we lead Europe by quite a long way with nearly a third of the total).
Hmm.... if things go tits up I can think of a lot more dangerous places starting with central London. Kaliningrad isn't worth a nuke.
Places likely to start a war, on the other hand...
Oh, Kaliningrad is definitely worth a nuke. The whole place is one massive military base - including nuclear submarines, planes, missiles and long-range air defences.
Ok. You just wonder what sort of F****** idiot thought that having a small piece of Russia separated from the rest of the country surrounded by newly independent fledgling states was a good idea. I mean, what could go wrong with that?
Your suggestion for correcting this circa 1989?
Right now, West is defending borders established Soviet borders re: Ukraine.
Kaliningrad is part of same ball of wax. AND with a population that's overwhelmingly Russian, and has been ever since Germans were expelled after WWII.
Perhaps could have been given independence (as with Moldova) or partitioned between Poland and Lithuania. Though doubt that either (esp. Lithuanians) would have wanted to increase their ethnic Russian populations from near zero to something more problematic.
I rather like the variety of U.K. weather. My year in nz was all a bit tame in Aucklands sub tropical climate. There is nothing better than a good winter walk or run followed by warming up at home in the nest.
Comments
Either they thought that Cameron could sell almost nothing, or Cameron had gone in and told them he could sell mostly words rather than positive actions.
The whole thing was as believable as their commitment to CAP reform, for which Blair gave up the rebate. Once the signatures were dry, it was “CAP reform, what CAP reform?”.
Pretty sure this will go well...
Global @global
·
3h
Exclusive: @NickFerrariLBC speaks to Prime Minister Boris Johnson on
@LBC
.
https://twitter.com/global/status/1542539857335050240
Some people genuinely love the mild, wet, cool British climate, I’m just not one of them (I wish I was, it would make life easier)
That said, I have never met anyone who loves the dark and gloom of a British winter. The light at 9 and dark by 3.30 stuff. Does anyone enjoy that?? Horrible
The judge also ordered Lev Parnas to pay $2.3 million in restitution.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/29/giulianis-former-ukraine-fixer-gets-20-months-in-prison-00043223
Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani who was a figure in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced Wednesday to a year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes.
Parnas, 50, had sought leniency on the grounds that he’d cooperated with the Congressional probe of Trump and his efforts to get the leaders of Ukraine to investigate President Joe Biden’s son.
U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken didn’t give Parnas credit for that assistance, which came only after the Soviet-born businessman was facing criminal charges. But the judge still imposed a sentence lighter than the six years sought by prosecutors.
The judge also ordered Parnas pay $2.3 million in restitution. . . .
The criminal case against Parnas was not directly related to his work acting as a fixer for Giuliani as the former New York City mayor connected with Ukrainian officials and lobbied them to launch an investigation of Biden’s son, Hunter.
Instead, it zeroed in on donations Parnas had illegally made to a number of U.S. politicians using the riches of a wealthy Russian as part of an effort to jump-start a legal recreational-marijuana business. . . .
SSI - This item is something of a corrective, to belief that the paths of Putinism are straightforward.
Rather, more kinks than a high-class West End knocking shop.
Just to pick one or two things apart as you consider past decisions and processes.
There is another thing we could have done, which is be part of the EU and ensure that it was clear that the intention was either ultimately to be a European State or emphatically not. In the end the UK population saw through the ambiguity.
The whole FoM, Schengen, Euro, parliament things are fine as long as the single state is the agreed destination. Without this it had be be a hollow dishonest fudge.
I think for the members it remains a hollow dishonest fudge for the same reasons.
Otherwise it had to be our role to ensure honesty and self limitation about aims and to be the stuff of a European Trade Organisation, a local branch of WTO.
That plus the egregious democratic deficit ensured and ensures ultimate disappointment.
By 2016 no good outcomes were available. Of those sub optimal ones joining EFTA/EEA was by miles the best. It still is.
The Conservative deputy chief whip has resigned after admitting he has “embarrassed myself and other people”.
In a letter to the prime minister Chris Pincher said: “Last night I drank far too much. I’ve embarrassed myself and other people which is the last thing I want to do and for that I apologise to you and to those concerned.
“I think the right thing to do in the circumstances is for me to resign as deputy chief whip. I owe it to you and the people I’ve caused upset to, to do this.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/30/tory-deputy-chief-whip-resigns-after-embarrassing-myself-and-others
What we needed was a handbrake on the absurd number of EU citizens who were coming here to work so that our infrastructure and services could cope. And we were told that the 4 freedoms were indivisible, take it or leave it. So we chose to leave it.
There is indeed little to love about the British winter, and the further north you go the worse it gets. But this conceals a mystery. What Brits love is not winter, but the complicated process, during winter, of keeping it at bay with heat, light, wool and atavistic Christiano-Viking-Saxon-Celtic ritual.
Evidence?
See also, how well our infrastructure and services are coping since we discouraged people to come here.
Suffice to say that, if fiction, story could logically be entitled "The Unpleasantness at the Carlton Club"
From 2017: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tory-mp-chris-pincher-refers-himself-to-police-over-pound-shop-harvey-weinstein-claim_uk_59ff6ce2e4b04cdbeb341f11
My ideal is:
A good day in September levels of temperature, say a nice balmy 21 degrees.
Dawn at 8am.
Dusk at 7 or 8pm - always ready for a drink once the sun is dropping noticeably.
"It is important to remember that at present the European Union is not a federation (like the United States of America), nor is it just an international organisation like the United Nations (UN) where governments merely cooperate together. The EU’s member states remain separate independent states that have ‘pooled sovereignty’ in certain policy areas. This is to say that they have decided to work collectively on particular matters."
‼️ Big debate in UKG over @EmmanuelMacron idea of a “European Political Community”
A senior UK official tells me the options being considered are to “ignore it”, “lean into it” or “wait and see”
Definitely worth watching. There is clearly “interest but reticence” in London 1/
I’d be all for some “solution” I think
And yes, you are right some of our services are suffering from a lack of almost infinite labour but the census shows our population is still increasing. We need to adjust to making better use of what we have. And that is not going to be easy, especially in a country apparently obsessed with refighting previous battles to little purpose ((other than some perceived political advantage to our floundering government).
"It is the second time Mr Pincher has been forced to quit the whips office over sex allegations." https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/19054116/tory-whip-resigns-following-groping-allegations/
Chris Pincher said he had drunk "far too much" and "embarrassing myself and other people" on a night out. The Conservative MP for Tamworth wrote to the prime minister to explain his decision to stand down."
https://news.sky.com/story/conservative-party-whip-christopher-pincher-resigns-after-drinking-too-much-and-embarrassing-myself-on-night-out-12643407
NOT to participate in and expand upon it.
Yet another example of Boris Johnson's success at revolutionizing British politics, blow by blow?
Aiden Burley, Michael Fabricant, Sir Gavin Fucking Williamson, Jonathan Gullis, Bill Cash, and Chris Pincher.
I am utterly confident that Aaron Bell will not join such August company.
Might it be that a period of lazy domestic employment practices/training/prioritising due to the easy supply of cheap labour has unbalanced our society and economy?
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1542595997267795968
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/06/30/chris-pincher-resigns-deputy-chief-whip-claims-drunkenly-groped/
Russia's enclave would be at the centre of a third world war"
https://unherd.com/thepost/kaliningrad-the-most-dangerous-place-on-earth/
All sounds pretty damn kinky to us clueless colonials. Likely one reason (albeit unmentioned) we went our own misbegotten way just under 246 years ago.
The problem with Brexit is not the loss of club membership, It is that our government is still doing none of the hard work that needed done in or out.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/06/30/chris-pincher-resigns-deputy-chief-whip-claims-drunkenly-groped/
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-tory-whip-chris-pincher-27370244.amp
Places likely to start a war, on the other hand...
You do touch on a truth, as well. We Brits have constructed any number of things to make our horrible winter tolerable, from cosy pubs to throngs at wintry sports grounds to the Bacchic palaver of pre-Christmas to Anglican evensong - at its best on a winter’s dusk, as Eliot observed. A roast dinner after a crisp winter walk across frosted English fields!
And THAT is what was taken from us, in lockdown 3. All of it. No wonder I nearly killed myself
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/3075345/#Comment_3075345
In it I posit
1) the laptop contained real Hunter Biden documents
2) that if it revealed verifiable criminality then it is irrelevant how the dos were obtained
3) that the source of the laptop was so compromised and so credibility shredding if revelaed that they needed a cover story, any cover story
4) as a result the custody chain is so borked that you would have to be totally wary of fake docs in the mix.
I dug up this post because once again MrEd is implying I've somehow changed my tune over time because I can't handle THE TRUTH about HARD HITTING FACTS that are going to blow this case WIDE OPEN.
No, a vote to Remain did not entail getting sucked ever deeper into the EU. That’s pure whatiffery.
CAP might have been crap (why?), but the British farmer did OK and food standards/quality improved enormously inside the EU. Both farmers and fishers believe they are now worse off.
Immigration was large-scale but was an absolute economic boon. Migrants tended to be more skilled, less welfare-dependent, and helped address the demographic time bomb.
The issue was that successive governments were not up-front about it, refused to use domestic control levers, and were happy to bank the upsides and ignore the impact of cultural change on various communities.
https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1542598016691015681
@PippaCrerar
It’s the second time that Pincher has quit the Tory whips office after he allegedly made an unwanted sexual pass at a former Olympic rower while wearing a bathrobe.
8:29 pm · 30 Jun 2022·Twitter for iPhone"
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1542591221180370945
It was a slap-dash gimmick, like much of what passes for British policy since late era Brown.
Looks like a rock solid Tory seat. 20,000 majority over Labour and the Lib Dems nowhere. So in a By-election Labour would probably win easily
Which according to her, began when he was a San Juan County commissioner, and she worked in his office at the courthouse. Where, according to her, they had several close encounters of the carnal kind.
After this all went public, the San Juan County commissioners responded by ordering their former colleague's office to be fumigated - pronto.
Question - What is situation re: the PM's former office at the Foreign Office? AND are cleaning, er, staff entitled to hazardous duty pay? OR at least an extra allocation of Lysol (or UK equivalent)?
Con to LD swing in Tiverton & Honiton was 29.9%
Con to LD swing in North Shropshire was 34.2%
Con to LD swing in Chesham & Amersham was 25.2%
The proportion of our profits taken by financial services has been ludicrous since at least the turn of the century, arguably longer. They gouge ridiculous salaries for services that are useful but not economically central to what we do. They also undoubtedly encourage short termism, working for very short term excellence at the cost of long term investment. The fact that they do this despite the bulk of their funds coming from long term investors like pension schemes is absurd but they need to stand out in the league tables.
It is clear from the US that it doesn't have to work that way. They are much more open to risk and capital growth rather than screaming about the dividends. A company growing in the way that Amazon did is simply unimaginable in the UK, to our detriment.
And yet, without their foreign earnings and the tax they pay we would have a signficantly lower standard of living. Tricky. Its a bit like the answer to the question of what is the best road to Dublin (and don't ask JRM)?
Who was author of the famed Tamworth Manifesto, "widely credited by historians as having laid down the principles upon which the modern British Conservative Party is based" (as per wiki).
Would think there would be pressure on the Euro too, in that case.
I don’t think American banks are any less short-term, but American consumers invest in American stocks.
Brits invest in housing, and foreign commodities (grossly simplifying).
It's almost as if they have an immature, man-child role model who is himself sexually incontinent.
https://twitter.com/ionewells/status/1542605326259740672
Angela Rayner: “Boris Johnson has serious questions to answer about why Chris Pincher was given this role in the first place and how he can remain a Conservative MP.”
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1542605560096366593
Instead, Stalin turned in into a totally contrived Russian colony.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1542565175877943296
Fun fact: Russians use Swedish equipment to produce the nuclear warheads. So if Sweden is indeed on the Russian nuke map, that's ironic. Unlike Germany though Sweden has been very open about its involvement in the Putin's rearmament program
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01792-y
Right now, West is defending borders established Soviet borders re: Ukraine.
Kaliningrad is part of same ball of wax. AND with a population that's overwhelmingly Russian, and has been ever since Germans were expelled after WWII.
Perhaps could have been given independence (as with Moldova) or partitioned between Poland and Lithuania. Though doubt that either (esp. Lithuanians) would have wanted to increase their ethnic Russian populations from near zero to something more problematic.
There is nothing better than a good winter walk or run followed by warming up at home in the nest.