Poor Liz . Apparently she co-authored a report which had a series of controversial proposals regarding the NHS. Many of those proposals would go down like a bucket of sick with most of the public but now allegedly just because you co-author something doesn’t mean you agree with the proposals . Perhaps her spokesperson can tell us what she agreed with and what she didn’t !
She’s certainly revolutionised the English language....
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
New countries joining agree to entering the Eurozone at some point in the future but there’s no legal mechanism to force them so it’s basically an aspiration which can never be met .
The exquisite irony, of course, is that if ultra-Remoaners like @Scott_xP had accepted the Brexit vote, and sought a compromise - rather than trying to thwart it and overturn it and demolish British democracy - they would have got their compromise. Britain would surely have stayed in the EEA/EFTA and the whole thing would feel much less Brexity. We’d be associate members.
And any route back would have been so much easier. Now it is impossible - or the work of two generations
This undeniable fact must gnaw at them. Daily
Yes but it would have been a Brexit that kept free movement and therefore betrayed the working class voters who won the referendum because of a desire to cut immigration from Eastern Europe in particular
Immigration has increased since Brexit and this government, which enacted Brexit, wants even more.
Good. Do you object to controlled, increased immigration? I don't, why would you? 👍
Read my reply in context of what I was replying to, which was that Brexit had to end free movement in order to cut immigration. If that was the government's intention then it has singularly failed.
Talk on immigration from the sane wing of Brexiteers (ie ignoring Farage) was primarily about controlling it, not about cutting it.
LOL x 1,000,000,000
Farage _was_ Brexit. And - where oh where is @Isam - cutting down immigration was the main driver of Brexit.
Look you can cover your ears and should la la la all you want but if you really think that the main driver of Brexit (rather than the fantasy land I'm not an awful person, really, state you're in now) was not about reducing immigration then you disqualify yourself from discussing politics, no matter how early you tipped Sunak to be next PM and at what odds.
On the subject of missing posters, where are Malcy and Moon Rabbit?
I asked about Malky a week or so ago; someone suggested he was banned.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
I would be happy to sign up to a commitment to join at a time that is right for us. No country will ever be forced to join the euro that doesn't want to, otherwise Sweden would have joined years ago. I have no ideological beef with the Euro, but as a practical matter it wouldn't make sense for the UK to join until our economies are more integrated and the EU has a stronger centralised fiscal capacity. In any case, I think there is a good chance we could reneogiate our formal opt out if we really wanted to, although I don't think it's necessary.
I find Brexit just pointless as it’s not delivering anything even close to what was promised to Leavers .
The irritation for Remainers like myself is that I can’t even say okay fair enough I didn’t like it but here’s a list of things that it’s done which is what Leavers wanted .
Take today’s Times headline . Wtf was the point of leaving the EU and immigration not falling . All we heard in 2016 was too many immigrants , and pressure on services now nothing’s changed .
Removing people’s freedom of movement rights with fxck all to show for it !
You just show that six years on, you still don't understand why people voted to Leave.
The Leave vote won because of immigration.
You just show that six years on, you still don't understand why people voted to Leave.
It's not disqualifying for nuclear but it is a strength of say wind turbines that it's tremendously difficult to missile strike a wind farm.
What about offshore windfarms? Genuine question: is there a single point of failure where the power comes onshore?
All windfarms have transformer units that take the power generated by many turbines, increases the voltages to match the distribution system, then transfers the power out via cables. These units often look like mini-oil rigs.
If you wanted to take a windfarm out, you would hit the (rather delicate) transformers rather than the individual turbines.
For offshore windfarms, there are also stations on land that perform similar roles. Again, juicy targets.
The sad thing is that our entire electricity system is vulnerable. The National Grid does an amazing job keeping things running, but it would not take many simultaneous failures of (say) transformers to have regional or national effects. And these transformers would be hard to replace as well.
If I really wanted to screw with a nation, I'd take out their electricity. It would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in the long term, and could be a non-nuclear strike.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
Rejoining would (in theory) require us to join the euro. I suspect, however, that a lot of Euro members would prefer us to remain well outside it...
Perhaps so, but the bureaucracy will insist on it, as it's their only real protection against us leaving for a second time.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
Rejoining would (in theory) require us to join the euro. I suspect, however, that a lot of Euro members would prefer us to remain well outside it...
That is true. If we had joined before 2008 I think there is a good chance it would have blown up.
I trusted supranational EU bureaucrats to act in the best interests of most people in the UK
Well, there's your mistake.
Do NOT censor like that to set up a smart ass reply. It's bad practice.
The next bit was key ... "far more than I will ever trust the Tory Party".
Its not remotely key. There is a democratic way to remove the Tory Party, vote for another party. There is no democratic way to remove unelected supranational EU bureaucrats (if you're rejecting the notion of Brexit entirely).
To put your faith in unelected bodies because you dislike the fact that some of your compatriots might vote for people you dislike, is not a healthy path to go down. Its downright Trumpian too, seeking to reverse election results that go "wrong".
Tell me, how do I remove, democratically, the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office? Or Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park? Or even (dare I say it), HM the Queen?
You may not realise this but I'm a republican who wants the House of Lords to be abolished, so perhaps not the best question to ask your question to, but all of those are in practice answerable to the elected House of Commons. And none of them can change the law without the elected Government or the Commons approving it.
Not the case with the EU which could circumvent the Commons.
But only by using powers the Commons had granted to it. So no difference.
Ah, yes, the old "we were always sovereign" nonsense. The only democratic control we ever had over the EU was the right to leave it. Still wondering why the referendum went as it did?
I do understand that feeling. But I don't see that we as a country had significantly less control over the EU than (say) the people of Greater Manchester do over the UK government. It's all indirect, at both levels. I have never elected my MP, only once voted for a party that formed the next government. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you are outvoted by everyone else. Same in the EU.
The people of Manchester get to elect a representative who can actually propose and make laws. An MEP cannot do that. At best they can stop laws being passed. All laws are proposed and prepared by the Commission, not the Parliament. There is a fundamental difference in the powers vested in the two types of politician.
But the Commission was appointed by governments. Who we voted for. I do agree there was an extra level of abstraction, which is not ideal. (MPs in each country--> Governments --> Commission)
But that is fundamentally less democratic.
In the UK it is zero levels divorced. You vote for MPs, who initiate and debate laws.
In the EU it is two levels divorced. You vote for MPs, who choose the Government, who choose the Commission who initiate the laws.
That is why there is a UK Leader of the Opposition but no EU Leader of the Opposition.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
New countries joining agree to entering the Eurozone at some point in the future but there’s no legal mechanism to force them so it’s basically an aspiration which can never be met .
Sweden being a case in point, that - despite a well-functioning economy - somehow never quite finds the right time.
I find Brexit just pointless as it’s not delivering anything even close to what was promised to Leavers .
The irritation for Remainers like myself is that I can’t even say okay fair enough I didn’t like it but here’s a list of things that it’s done which is what Leavers wanted .
Take today’s Times headline . Wtf was the point of leaving the EU and immigration not falling . All we heard in 2016 was too many immigrants , and pressure on services now nothing’s changed .
Removing people’s freedom of movement rights with fxck all to show for it !
You just show that six years on, you still don't understand why people voted to Leave.
The Leave vote won because of immigration.
You just show that six years on, you still don't understand why people voted to Leave.
Give me a break ! All the papers went on about was immigration for months . The deciding factor was immigration . If you’re seriously trying to say otherwise then you clearly are on a wind up !
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
I find Brexit just pointless as it’s not delivering anything even close to what was promised to Leavers .
The irritation for Remainers like myself is that I can’t even say okay fair enough I didn’t like it but here’s a list of things that it’s done which is what Leavers wanted .
Take today’s Times headline . Wtf was the point of leaving the EU and immigration not falling . All we heard in 2016 was too many immigrants , and pressure on services now nothing’s changed .
Removing people’s freedom of movement rights with fxck all to show for it !
You just show that six years on, you still don't understand why people voted to Leave.
The Leave vote won because of immigration.
You just show that six years on, you still don't understand why people voted to Leave.
Give me a break ! All the papers went on about was immigration for months . The deciding factor was immigration . If you’re seriously trying to say otherwise then you clearly are on a wind up !
If you blame it for Brexit, do you regret the high level of immigration from 1997-2016?
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
Rejoining would (in theory) require us to join the euro. I suspect, however, that a lot of Euro members would prefer us to remain well outside it...
Perhaps so, but the bureaucracy will insist on it, as it's their only real protection against us leaving for a second time.
It would need a Treaty change which won’t happen . Regardless the UK isn’t rejoining and the EU aren’t interested in having us back anytime soon , for good reason !
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
What's the actual issue with joining the euro. The horror of our politicians having to actually stick to some fiscal rules ? Foreign exchanges being less busy in August ? The Queens head being removed from our notes and coins ? Andrew Bailey losing his job ?
Having interest rates set based upon pan-European economic conditions rather than British economic conditions.
Having a pan-European lender of last resort to European banks rather than a British lender of last resort to British banks.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
Rejoining will require us to join the euro.
What's the actual issue with joining the euro. The horror of our politicians having to actually stick to some fiscal rules ? Foreign exchanges being less busy in August ? The Queens head being removed from our notes and coins ? Andrew Bailey losing his job ?
A monetary policy dictated for the manufacturers of Germany and the farmers of France, paying no attention to the City, nor to the UK cost of living, with no democratic oversight?
It's not disqualifying for nuclear but it is a strength of say wind turbines that it's tremendously difficult to missile strike a wind farm.
What about offshore windfarms? Genuine question: is there a single point of failure where the power comes onshore?
All windfarms have transformer units that take the power generated by many turbines, increases the voltages to match the distribution system, then transfers the power out via cables. These units often look like mini-oil rigs.
If you wanted to take a windfarm out, you would hit the (rather delicate) transformers rather than the individual turbines.
For offshore windfarms, there are also stations on land that perform similar roles. Again, juicy targets.
The sad thing is that our entire electricity system is vulnerable. The National Grid does an amazing job keeping things running, but it would not take many simultaneous failures of (say) transformers to have regional or national effects. And these transformers would be hard to replace as well.
If I really wanted to screw with a nation, I'd take out their electricity. It would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in the long term, and could be a non-nuclear strike.
I believe this is the big risk of a Carrington Event, that it fries all the transformers and it would take ages to replace them.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
I think it was pointless to damaging - which of those being nearer the truth depending on execution and follow up. As it turns out we've gone for damaging - a botch job driven by silly nationalistic willy waving and softhead "great and special country" sentiment. This was always likely - because of the sort of people driving the project - but it wasn't imo inevitable.
What we could have done was Brexited in a careful statesmanlike pragmatic way, keeping good close relations with Europe and combining this with competent government at home. This would have given us a far better Brexit outcome, one towards the more positive 'pointless' end of the spectrum. Maybe - being ultra optimistic but why not - it could have reached the absolute best outcome of UTTERLY pointless.
And in fact - getting carried away with positivity now - in the grand scheme of things, remembering it's only been a couple of years since we left the EU, it is still very possible imo that we can get to the optimum endstate in time. We just have to drop all our nonsense. If we do that, eg stop electing vacuous populists, then with a bit of luck and a following wind the dream of an utterly pointless Brexit is still on.
I find Brexit just pointless as it’s not delivering anything even close to what was promised to Leavers .
The irritation for Remainers like myself is that I can’t even say okay fair enough I didn’t like it but here’s a list of things that it’s done which is what Leavers wanted .
Take today’s Times headline . Wtf was the point of leaving the EU and immigration not falling . All we heard in 2016 was too many immigrants , and pressure on services now nothing’s changed .
Removing people’s freedom of movement rights with fxck all to show for it !
You just show that six years on, you still don't understand why people voted to Leave.
The Leave vote won because of immigration.
You just show that six years on, you still don't understand why people voted to Leave.
Give me a break ! All the papers went on about was immigration for months . The deciding factor was immigration . If you’re seriously trying to say otherwise then you clearly are on a wind up !
If you blame it for Brexit, do you regret the high level of immigration from 1997-2016?
I don’t have an issue with immigration personally but understand why some people might have had concerns re services . That though was caused by a lack of investment from government.
It's not disqualifying for nuclear but it is a strength of say wind turbines that it's tremendously difficult to missile strike a wind farm.
What about offshore windfarms? Genuine question: is there a single point of failure where the power comes onshore?
All windfarms have transformer units that take the power generated by many turbines, increases the voltages to match the distribution system, then transfers the power out via cables. These units often look like mini-oil rigs.
If you wanted to take a windfarm out, you would hit the (rather delicate) transformers rather than the individual turbines.
For offshore windfarms, there are also stations on land that perform similar roles. Again, juicy targets.
The sad thing is that our entire electricity system is vulnerable. The National Grid does an amazing job keeping things running, but it would not take many simultaneous failures of (say) transformers to have regional or national effects. And these transformers would be hard to replace as well.
If I really wanted to screw with a nation, I'd take out their electricity. It would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in the long term, and could be a non-nuclear strike.
Yes, iirc in the Balkans war, Nato targeted Serbian power stations. As has Russia in Ukraine, and previously by cyber-attacks against power grids, as has China, America, Israel and Iran.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
I am scared of many things. Aliens, AI, Wokeness, Putin, new avian flu, a sudden unexplained lack of wine (and also intrigued by some of them) but I can also assure you that I am not remotely scared that Brexit will be reversed and we will “rejoin”. The political obstacles between us and that make it unthinkable for 30 years. By which time the aliens will have taken over the planet from the cold dead birds with AI brains, so who cares
I just like winding up Remoaners. Because they are so easy to wind up. That should be pretty bloody obvious by now
Yes of course and it is your right to do so and good luck with it. I felt super relieved in 2019 when Corbyn lost and I probably wasn't beyond pointing out my happiness to the various Corbyn-supporting Labour supporters then and afterwards.
But what I never said to any of them, no matter how much I disagreed with their policies (even @BJO for heaven's sake) is that they should shut up and not discuss Lab vs Cons any more, or their particular preference for Lab leader.
And yet when we discuss an equally live political topic, Brexit, plenty on here want no more discussion and berate posters ( @Scott_xP in this instance this morning) when they post about it.
Moreso the irony when he was posting leavers' views on Brexit. So even leavers discuss it still.
Again, wrong
@Scott_xP was advised to desist. On the grounds of his mental health. And I concur with that
Watching someone - clearly distressed by Brexit - mention Brexit incessantly day after day, is not a pretty sight. Like watching a man, deserted by his wife six years ago, who still spends his days saying “she was a heartless bitch AND I never loved her anyway, look here’s a photo of her in a bikini”
It’s not good. Stop
Nah that's bollocks. No one on here gets to comment on someone else's mental health apart from their own. Or they shouldn't if they don't want to make themselves look like a c**t.
You don't get to say who should post what or why.
Stick to your Regents Park railing painting revelations.
Going to Leon for mental health advice would be like asking Dura_Ace to advise on road safety.
I taught one of our Ukrainians to drive! I got her to overtake a dawdling VW Caddy by going to the wrong way round a roundabout flat out. She executed a very precise late apex and that's 100% down to my didactic technique.
I think it was pointless to damaging - which of those being nearer the truth depending on execution and follow up. As it turns out we've gone for damaging - a botch job driven by silly nationalistic willy waving and softhead "great and special country" sentiment. This was always likely - because of the sort of people driving the project - but it wasn't imo inevitable.
What we could have done was Brexited in a careful statesmanlike pragmatic way, keeping good close relations with Europe and combining this with competent government at home. This would have given us a far better Brexit outcome, one right towards the more positive 'pointless' end of the spectrum. Maybe - being ultra optimistic but why not - it could have reached the absolute best outcome of UTTERLY pointless.
And in fact - getting carried away with positivity now - in the grand scheme of things, remembering it's only been a couple of years since we left the EU, it is still very possible imo that we can get to the optimum endstate in time. We just have to stop all our nonsense. If we do that, eg stop electing vacuous populists, then with a bit of luck and a following wind the dream of an utterly pointless Brexit is still on.
I agree with that overall. Trouble is I don't see good governance coming any time soon. For various reasons party politics has degenerated. Labour don't fill me with optimism. They share some vices with the Tories, avoid some vices but have vices of their own being probably more authoritarian and more ideologically partisan. But underlying the gloomy picture is is the poor standard of MPs and senior politicians.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
The closest we're seeing to racism in this thread, and even that isn't it, is @nico679 banging on about how immigration isn't down when Brexit wasn't said to be about cutting immigration it was about controlling it.
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
The closest we're seeing to racism in this thread, and even that isn't it, is @nico679 banging on about how immigration isn't down when Brexit wasn't said to be about cutting immigration it was about controlling it.
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Just pushes up house prices. Demand side answer to nimbyism.
I think it was pointless to damaging - which of those being nearer the truth depending on execution and follow up. As it turns out we've gone for damaging - a botch job driven by silly nationalistic willy waving and softhead "great and special country" sentiment. This was always likely - because of the sort of people driving the project - but it wasn't imo inevitable.
What we could have done was Brexited in a careful statesmanlike pragmatic way, keeping good close relations with Europe and combining this with competent government at home. This would have given us a far better Brexit outcome, one right towards the more positive 'pointless' end of the spectrum. Maybe - being ultra optimistic but why not - it could have reached the absolute best outcome of UTTERLY pointless.
And in fact - getting carried away with positivity now - in the grand scheme of things, remembering it's only been a couple of years since we left the EU, it is still very possible imo that we can get to the optimum endstate in time. We just have to stop all our nonsense. If we do that, eg stop electing vacuous populists, then with a bit of luck and a following wind the dream of an utterly pointless Brexit is still on.
I agree with that overall. Trouble is I don't see good governance coming any time soon. For various reasons party politics has degenerated. Labour don't fill me with optimism. They share some vices with the Tories, avoid some vices but have vices of their own being probably more authoritarian and more ideologically partisan. But underlying the gloomy picture is is the poor standard of MPs and senior politicians.
We get the politicians we deserve, we elect them after all
This is just nervous chatter to fill in the remaining minutes till Zap gets zapped.
Yes you might be right. I’m in a cab to City Airport and I keep checking Twitter for Apocalypse Updates. I rather hope we don’t fly straight through the radiation cloud
How long would it take fall out from Ukraine to disperse over the Alos?
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
I am scared of many things. Aliens, AI, Wokeness, Putin, new avian flu, a sudden unexplained lack of wine (and also intrigued by some of them) but I can also assure you that I am not remotely scared that Brexit will be reversed and we will “rejoin”. The political obstacles between us and that make it unthinkable for 30 years. By which time the aliens will have taken over the planet from the cold dead birds with AI brains, so who cares
I just like winding up Remoaners. Because they are so easy to wind up. That should be pretty bloody obvious by now
Yes of course and it is your right to do so and good luck with it. I felt super relieved in 2019 when Corbyn lost and I probably wasn't beyond pointing out my happiness to the various Corbyn-supporting Labour supporters then and afterwards.
But what I never said to any of them, no matter how much I disagreed with their policies (even @BJO for heaven's sake) is that they should shut up and not discuss Lab vs Cons any more, or their particular preference for Lab leader.
And yet when we discuss an equally live political topic, Brexit, plenty on here want no more discussion and berate posters ( @Scott_xP in this instance this morning) when they post about it.
Moreso the irony when he was posting leavers' views on Brexit. So even leavers discuss it still.
Again, wrong
@Scott_xP was advised to desist. On the grounds of his mental health. And I concur with that
Watching someone - clearly distressed by Brexit - mention Brexit incessantly day after day, is not a pretty sight. Like watching a man, deserted by his wife six years ago, who still spends his days saying “she was a heartless bitch AND I never loved her anyway, look here’s a photo of her in a bikini”
It’s not good. Stop
Nah that's bollocks. No one on here gets to comment on someone else's mental health apart from their own. Or they shouldn't if they don't want to make themselves look like a c**t.
You don't get to say who should post what or why.
Stick to your Regents Park railing painting revelations.
Going to Leon for mental health advice would be like asking Dura_Ace to advise on road safety.
I taught one of our Ukrainians to drive! I got her to overtake a dawdling VW Caddy by going to the wrong way round a roundabout flat out. She executed a very precise late apex and that's 100% down to my didactic technique.
Dipping back in as back at work and busy. Interesting he said / she said going on with regards to the rail strikes. I see that Sebastian Fox is now threatening to impose a settlement on the various striking workers.
That could be fun! So many of the problems (which mainly aren't strikes) are directly mandated by the DfT. Their bean counters have directed franchises to reduce driver head counts and route cards. So lets say they impose a pay settlement - how does that "modernise" the railway and how does it miraculously fix the refusal to pay for sufficient drivers?
Reminds me of when Chris Failing was Transport Secretary, when a catastrofuck timetable fiasco which ground much of northern england to an unreliable fault. His repeatedly stated solution was a "digital railway" to use computer technology which didn't exist to provide a solution that wouldn't work if it did.
I think the reality here is simple. As the government has gone on strike for the summer, DafT are saying "no, you're on strike" to divert attention from their own strike.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
The closest we're seeing to racism in this thread, and even that isn't it, is @nico679 banging on about how immigration isn't down when Brexit wasn't said to be about cutting immigration it was about controlling it.
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Just pushes up house prices. Demand side answer to nimbyism.
Homeowner are you?
We have plenty of land to build on. Just build more houses and immigration isn't an issue.
People advocating both NIMBYism and high immigration are the problem, like the Lib Dems. People advocating immigration combined with house building is entirely reasonable.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
That analysis already looks completely irrelevant where it’s not wrong.
I think it was pointless to damaging - which of those being nearer the truth depending on execution and follow up. As it turns out we've gone for damaging - a botch job driven by silly nationalistic willy waving and softhead "great and special country" sentiment. This was always likely - because of the sort of people driving the project - but it wasn't imo inevitable.
What we could have done was Brexited in a careful statesmanlike pragmatic way, keeping good close relations with Europe and combining this with competent government at home. This would have given us a far better Brexit outcome, one right towards the more positive 'pointless' end of the spectrum. Maybe - being ultra optimistic but why not - it could have reached the absolute best outcome of UTTERLY pointless.
And in fact - getting carried away with positivity now - in the grand scheme of things, remembering it's only been a couple of years since we left the EU, it is still very possible imo that we can get to the optimum endstate in time. We just have to stop all our nonsense. If we do that, eg stop electing vacuous populists, then with a bit of luck and a following wind the dream of an utterly pointless Brexit is still on.
I agree with that overall. Trouble is I don't see good governance coming any time soon. For various reasons party politics has degenerated. Labour don't fill me with optimism. They share some vices with the Tories, avoid some vices but have vices of their own being probably more authoritarian and more ideologically partisan. But underlying the gloomy picture is is the poor standard of MPs and senior politicians.
We get the politicians we deserve, we elect them after all
But the die is cast by the party machines which most of us are not involved with - but I take your point. New media and an increasingly infantile and ignorant electorate don't help.
This is just nervous chatter to fill in the remaining minutes till Zap gets zapped.
Yes you might be right. I’m in a cab to City Airport and I keep checking Twitter for Apocalypse Updates. I rather hope we don’t fly straight through the radiation cloud
How long would it take fall out from Ukraine to disperse over the Alos?
Just cross your fingers they don't go for an EMP attack while you're airborne.
You were loving it earlier on. Or do you have sole license to troll ?
That was me, trolling. I am constantly told to shut the fuck up about things - Woke, aliens, whatever - which is actually just sublimated angst that I divert conversation with more interesting commentary - so I thought I’d do a STFU comment myself. I quite enjoyed it
Rupert Harrison @rbrharrison · 19m This not just another energy shock / cost of living squeeze. It's a once in a generation threat to the solvency of many households and businesses that could scar the economy for years to come
Aliens, people obsessed with Brexit, the ruminations of the US SC, the thinking behind anyone choosing to be a lawyer for Donald Trump, there are lots of profound and deeply mysterious things in the world.
But surely Stokes' fields yesterday evening and the weird reluctance to take the new ball this morning are right up there. Was being only 100 behind not enough of a challenge?
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
The closest we're seeing to racism in this thread, and even that isn't it, is @nico679 banging on about how immigration isn't down when Brexit wasn't said to be about cutting immigration it was about controlling it.
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Just pushes up house prices. Demand side answer to nimbyism.
Homeowner are you?
We have plenty of land to build on. Just build more houses and immigration isn't an issue.
People advocating both NIMBYism and high immigration are the problem, like the Lib Dems. People advocating immigration combined with house building is entirely reasonable.
Yes it is an issue, we are already one of the most densely populated nations on the planet.
If the government does not get a grip on non EU immigration as it has reduced EU immigration and cut cost of living it will likely lose the redwall and the next general election whether Truss or Sunak is PM. Building all over the greenbelt would just seal its fate, as scores of Home counties seats would follow Chesham and Amersham and go LD
Rupert Harrison @rbrharrison · 19m This not just another energy shock / cost of living squeeze. It's a once in a generation threat to the solvency of many households and businesses that could scar the economy for years to come
Rupert Harrison @rbrharrison · 14m A supply shock that will lead to a big reduction in purchasing power and therefore a negative demand shock for many other sectors
We saw an example of this from @TSE on Wednesday - the easiest solution for his employer is to close their office for months and subsidise their worker's home heating costs.
Impact of that will be felt by train companies (fewer passengers) and the coffee shops round his Manchester Office.
Flannels will also have a reduction in sales in their Manchester store but that may be compensated by increased purchases in Sheffield...
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
I think it was pointless to damaging - which of those being nearer the truth depending on execution and follow up. As it turns out we've gone for damaging - a botch job driven by silly nationalistic willy waving and softhead "great and special country" sentiment. This was always likely - because of the sort of people driving the project - but it wasn't imo inevitable.
What we could have done was Brexited in a careful statesmanlike pragmatic way, keeping good close relations with Europe and combining this with competent government at home. This would have given us a far better Brexit outcome, one right towards the more positive 'pointless' end of the spectrum. Maybe - being ultra optimistic but why not - it could have reached the absolute best outcome of UTTERLY pointless.
And in fact - getting carried away with positivity now - in the grand scheme of things, remembering it's only been a couple of years since we left the EU, it is still very possible imo that we can get to the optimum endstate in time. We just have to stop all our nonsense. If we do that, eg stop electing vacuous populists, then with a bit of luck and a following wind the dream of an utterly pointless Brexit is still on.
I agree with that overall. Trouble is I don't see good governance coming any time soon. For various reasons party politics has degenerated. Labour don't fill me with optimism. They share some vices with the Tories, avoid some vices but have vices of their own being probably more authoritarian and more ideologically partisan. But underlying the gloomy picture is is the poor standard of MPs and senior politicians.
We get the politicians we deserve, we elect them after all
But the die is cast by the party machines which most of us are not involved with - but I take your point. New media and an increasingly infantile and ignorant electorate don't help.
Nothing to stop you joining the local party whose MP represents your constituency and get a vote on their successor and next leader either
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
I think he wants (needs) control of all the spent nuclear fuel in Ukraine.
He has sown the dragons teeth and watered them with much blood. He fears the crop....
I find Brexit just pointless as it’s not delivering anything even close to what was promised to Leavers .
The irritation for Remainers like myself is that I can’t even say okay fair enough I didn’t like it but here’s a list of things that it’s done which is what Leavers wanted .
Take today’s Times headline . Wtf was the point of leaving the EU and immigration not falling . All we heard in 2016 was too many immigrants , and pressure on services now nothing’s changed .
Removing people’s freedom of movement rights with fxck all to show for it !
You just show that six years on, you still don't understand why people voted to Leave.
The Leave vote won because of immigration.
You just show that six years on, you still don't understand why people voted to Leave.
Give me a break ! All the papers went on about was immigration for months . The deciding factor was immigration . If you’re seriously trying to say otherwise then you clearly are on a wind up !
If you blame it for Brexit, do you regret the high level of immigration from 1997-2016?
I don’t have an issue with immigration personally but understand why some people might have had concerns re services . That though was caused by a lack of investment from government.
Because the millions of minimum-wage immigrants were paying very little taxes.
Rupert Harrison @rbrharrison · 19m This not just another energy shock / cost of living squeeze. It's a once in a generation threat to the solvency of many households and businesses that could scar the economy for years to come
Rupert Harrison @rbrharrison · 14m A supply shock that will lead to a big reduction in purchasing power and therefore a negative demand shock for many other sectors
We saw an example of this from @TSE on Wednesday - the easiest solution for his employer is to close their office for months and subsidise their worker's home heating costs.
Impact of that will be felt by train companies (fewer passengers) and the coffee shops round his Manchester Office.
Flannels will also have a reduction in sales in their Manchester store but that may be compensated by increased purchases in Sheffield...
Getting genuinely scary. How many hospitality businesses, still recovering from covid lockdowns, are going to make it through this winter?
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
This sort of apocalyptic escalation was always a possibility since we decided to get involved in the latest iteration of a long running border dispute in the arse crack of Eastern Europe that had nothing to do with us.
Rupert Harrison @rbrharrison · 19m This not just another energy shock / cost of living squeeze. It's a once in a generation threat to the solvency of many households and businesses that could scar the economy for years to come
Rupert Harrison @rbrharrison · 14m A supply shock that will lead to a big reduction in purchasing power and therefore a negative demand shock for many other sectors
We saw an example of this from @TSE on Wednesday - the easiest solution for his employer is to close their office for months and subsidise their worker's home heating costs.
Impact of that will be felt by train companies (fewer passengers) and the coffee shops round his Manchester Office.
Flannels will also have a reduction in sales in their Manchester store but that may be compensated by increased purchases in Sheffield...
Isn't energy-driven demand destruction the objective of Western economic policy?
On-topic re the crudités advert, we have seen similar before with Belgian endives, Greggs pasties and right now as Rishi is portrayed as an out-of-touch squillionaire who lies about eating at McDonalds and does not know how to make a contactless payment.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
I am scared of many things. Aliens, AI, Wokeness, Putin, new avian flu, a sudden unexplained lack of wine (and also intrigued by some of them) but I can also assure you that I am not remotely scared that Brexit will be reversed and we will “rejoin”. The political obstacles between us and that make it unthinkable for 30 years. By which time the aliens will have taken over the planet from the cold dead birds with AI brains, so who cares
I just like winding up Remoaners. Because they are so easy to wind up. That should be pretty bloody obvious by now
Yes of course and it is your right to do so and good luck with it. I felt super relieved in 2019 when Corbyn lost and I probably wasn't beyond pointing out my happiness to the various Corbyn-supporting Labour supporters then and afterwards.
But what I never said to any of them, no matter how much I disagreed with their policies (even @BJO for heaven's sake) is that they should shut up and not discuss Lab vs Cons any more, or their particular preference for Lab leader.
And yet when we discuss an equally live political topic, Brexit, plenty on here want no more discussion and berate posters ( @Scott_xP in this instance this morning) when they post about it.
Moreso the irony when he was posting leavers' views on Brexit. So even leavers discuss it still.
Again, wrong
@Scott_xP was advised to desist. On the grounds of his mental health. And I concur with that
Watching someone - clearly distressed by Brexit - mention Brexit incessantly day after day, is not a pretty sight. Like watching a man, deserted by his wife six years ago, who still spends his days saying “she was a heartless bitch AND I never loved her anyway, look here’s a photo of her in a bikini”
It’s not good. Stop
Nah that's bollocks. No one on here gets to comment on someone else's mental health apart from their own. Or they shouldn't if they don't want to make themselves look like a c**t.
You don't get to say who should post what or why.
Stick to your Regents Park railing painting revelations.
Going to Leon for mental health advice would be like asking Dura_Ace to advise on road safety.
I taught one of our Ukrainians to drive! I got her to overtake a dawdling VW Caddy by going to the wrong way round a roundabout flat out. She executed a very precise late apex and that's 100% down to my didactic technique.
Maybe take her on a track day or a karting session first.
Rupert Harrison @rbrharrison · 19m This not just another energy shock / cost of living squeeze. It's a once in a generation threat to the solvency of many households and businesses that could scar the economy for years to come
Rupert Harrison @rbrharrison · 14m A supply shock that will lead to a big reduction in purchasing power and therefore a negative demand shock for many other sectors
We saw an example of this from @TSE on Wednesday - the easiest solution for his employer is to close their office for months and subsidise their worker's home heating costs.
Impact of that will be felt by train companies (fewer passengers) and the coffee shops round his Manchester Office.
Flannels will also have a reduction in sales in their Manchester store but that may be compensated by increased purchases in Sheffield...
Getting genuinely scary. How many hospitality businesses, still recovering from covid lockdowns, are going to make it through this winter?
Re immigration. This will increasingly return as an issue, especially the channel migrants
I read an interview with the likely new Italian PM last night. A hard right leader. The article explained her rise as being due to extreme levels of illegal migration that dwarf those in Britain
We might get 40k channel migrants this year and it is doubling every couple of years or less. It will soon be a massive debate if this continues
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
The correlation between Good idea/bad idea and Stay Out/Rejoin is rather weaker than you seem to be assuming.
Re immigration. This will increasingly return as an issue, especially the channel migrants
I read an interview with the likely new Italian PM last night. A hard right leader. The article explained her rise as being due to extreme levels of illegal migration that dwarf those in Britain
We might get 40k channel migrants this year and it is doubling every couple of years or less. It will soon be a massive debate if this continues
And Farage would then look to seize his chance as Meloni has in Italy
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
The closest we're seeing to racism in this thread, and even that isn't it, is @nico679 banging on about how immigration isn't down when Brexit wasn't said to be about cutting immigration it was about controlling it.
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Polling suggests people are happier with immigration now than before Brexit. It is hard to prove why that is. Is it because they feel the immigration system now is better, as you suggest, or is it because the media reporting of immigration is very different now? We know media reporting can be a big driver of public perception, although of course the media also follow public sentiment, so it’s not a straightforward one-way causal relationship. Or is it because Remain voters came to associate a pro-immigration position with a Remain identity, and so shifted their attitudes? That is, it’s not that Leavers concerns have been assuaged, but that Remainers have become more vocally for something.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
This sort of apocalyptic escalation was always a possibility since we decided to get involved in the latest iteration of a long running border dispute in the arse crack of Eastern Europe that had nothing to do with us.
It's had something to do with us since at least 17 July 2014, when Russia murdered 10 British citizens amongst others.
Re immigration. This will increasingly return as an issue, especially the channel migrants
I read an interview with the likely new Italian PM last night. A hard right leader. The article explained her rise as being due to extreme levels of illegal migration that dwarf those in Britain
We might get 40k channel migrants this year and it is doubling every couple of years or less. It will soon be a massive debate if this continues
Could we stick them on bikes to generate power for the nation ?
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
Yup! If there’s an ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia, this just became a nuclear war, and Putin can expect to have his troops driven out of Ukraine by the world standing up against him. Including China.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
The closest we're seeing to racism in this thread, and even that isn't it, is @nico679 banging on about how immigration isn't down when Brexit wasn't said to be about cutting immigration it was about controlling it.
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Just pushes up house prices. Demand side answer to nimbyism.
Homeowner are you?
We have plenty of land to build on. Just build more houses and immigration isn't an issue.
People advocating both NIMBYism and high immigration are the problem, like the Lib Dems. People advocating immigration combined with house building is entirely reasonable.
Yes it is an issue, we are already one of the most densely populated nations on the planet.
If the government does not get a grip on non EU immigration as it has reduced EU immigration and cut cost of living it will likely lose the redwall and the next general election whether Truss or Sunak is PM. Building all over the greenbelt would just seal its fate, as scores of Home counties seats would follow Chesham and Amersham and go LD
I couldn't care less if you lose your Home Counties seat.
Where are the opinion polls showing Red Wall voters are unhappy with immigration today? The fact you've never visited the Red Wall in your life, let alone lived here, shows why like Theresa May you reduce everything down to "cut immigration" despite not having voted for it.
I think it was pointless to damaging - which of those being nearer the truth depending on execution and follow up. As it turns out we've gone for damaging - a botch job driven by silly nationalistic willy waving and softhead "great and special country" sentiment. This was always likely - because of the sort of people driving the project - but it wasn't imo inevitable.
What we could have done was Brexited in a careful statesmanlike pragmatic way, keeping good close relations with Europe and combining this with competent government at home. This would have given us a far better Brexit outcome, one right towards the more positive 'pointless' end of the spectrum. Maybe - being ultra optimistic but why not - it could have reached the absolute best outcome of UTTERLY pointless.
And in fact - getting carried away with positivity now - in the grand scheme of things, remembering it's only been a couple of years since we left the EU, it is still very possible imo that we can get to the optimum endstate in time. We just have to stop all our nonsense. If we do that, eg stop electing vacuous populists, then with a bit of luck and a following wind the dream of an utterly pointless Brexit is still on.
I agree with that overall. Trouble is I don't see good governance coming any time soon. For various reasons party politics has degenerated. Labour don't fill me with optimism. They share some vices with the Tories, avoid some vices but have vices of their own being probably more authoritarian and more ideologically partisan. But underlying the gloomy picture is is the poor standard of MPs and senior politicians.
You don't view Starmer Labour as a better bet for good governance than this manifestation of the Tory Party?
Have you down as a Centrist so I find this a bit worrying - if you really mean it rather feeling you had to say it for balance.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
And if the radiation drifts into a NATO country in serious life threatening levels? That sounds like an attack on NATO to me.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
This sort of apocalyptic escalation was always a possibility since we decided to get involved in the latest iteration of a long running border dispute in the arse crack of Eastern Europe that had nothing to do with us.
It's had something to do with us since at least 17 July 2014, when Russia murdered 10 British citizens amongst others.
No.
We should give Russia Schleswig-Holstein and Corsica, in return for 10 years free gas.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Ukraine's biggest mistake was giving up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees that have turned out to be worthless.
NATO is not going to go to war for Ukraine. Indirect support such as supplying them with arms is as far as we're going to go.
I expect a lot of nuclear proliferation from non-nuclear states over the next decade or so.
Perhaps we should cut out the middle man and give the Ukrainians a suitcase nuke and a first class ticket to Moscow?
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
This sort of apocalyptic escalation was always a possibility since we decided to get involved in the latest iteration of a long running border dispute in the arse crack of Eastern Europe that had nothing to do with us.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
The closest we're seeing to racism in this thread, and even that isn't it, is @nico679 banging on about how immigration isn't down when Brexit wasn't said to be about cutting immigration it was about controlling it.
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Just pushes up house prices. Demand side answer to nimbyism.
Homeowner are you?
We have plenty of land to build on. Just build more houses and immigration isn't an issue.
People advocating both NIMBYism and high immigration are the problem, like the Lib Dems. People advocating immigration combined with house building is entirely reasonable.
Yes it is an issue, we are already one of the most densely populated nations on the planet.
If the government does not get a grip on non EU immigration as it has reduced EU immigration and cut cost of living it will likely lose the redwall and the next general election whether Truss or Sunak is PM. Building all over the greenbelt would just seal its fate, as scores of Home counties seats would follow Chesham and Amersham and go LD
I couldn't care less if you lose your Home Counties seat.
Where are the opinion polls showing Red Wall voters are unhappy with immigration today? The fact you've never visited the Red Wall in your life, let alone lived here, shows why like Theresa May you reduce everything down to "cut immigration" despite not having voted for it.
People are relaxed about immigration. It was controlling immigration that was the issue not stopping it.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Ukraine's biggest mistake was giving up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees that have turned out to be worthless.
NATO is not going to go to war for Ukraine. Indirect support such as supplying them with arms is as far as we're going to go.
I expect a lot of nuclear proliferation from non-nuclear states over the next decade or so.
Perhaps we should cut out the middle man and give the Ukrainians a suitcase nuke and a first class ticket to Moscow?
Putin thinks that the Ukrainians will do just that, using the contents of the expended fuel rod ponds at the Ukrainian power stations, the moment they can.
Re immigration. This will increasingly return as an issue, especially the channel migrants
I read an interview with the likely new Italian PM last night. A hard right leader. The article explained her rise as being due to extreme levels of illegal migration that dwarf those in Britain
We might get 40k channel migrants this year and it is doubling every couple of years or less. It will soon be a massive debate if this continues
And Farage would then look to seize his chance as Meloni has in Italy
Farage doesn't have the discipline or inclination required to make serious inroads in domestic politics.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
Re immigration. This will increasingly return as an issue, especially the channel migrants
I read an interview with the likely new Italian PM last night. A hard right leader. The article explained her rise as being due to extreme levels of illegal migration that dwarf those in Britain
We might get 40k channel migrants this year and it is doubling every couple of years or less. It will soon be a massive debate if this continues
And Farage would then look to seize his chance as Meloni has in Italy
Farage doesn't have the discipline or inclination required to make serious inroads in domestic politics.
He got 12% of the UK vote at the 2015 General election, 3 times the 4% Meloni's Brothers of Italy got at the 2018 general election
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
And if the radiation drifts into a NATO country in serious life threatening levels? That sounds like an attack on NATO to me.
Not unless accompanied by troops and certainly not to the extent the US and UK are going to go to WW3 with Russia, whatever neighbouring States of Ukraine do
I trusted supranational EU bureaucrats to act in the best interests of most people in the UK
Well, there's your mistake.
Do NOT censor like that to set up a smart ass reply. It's bad practice.
The next bit was key ... "far more than I will ever trust the Tory Party".
Its not remotely key. There is a democratic way to remove the Tory Party, vote for another party. There is no democratic way to remove unelected supranational EU bureaucrats (if you're rejecting the notion of Brexit entirely).
To put your faith in unelected bodies because you dislike the fact that some of your compatriots might vote for people you dislike, is not a healthy path to go down. Its downright Trumpian too, seeking to reverse election results that go "wrong".
Tell me, how do I remove, democratically, the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office? Or Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park? Or even (dare I say it), HM the Queen?
You may not realise this but I'm a republican who wants the House of Lords to be abolished, so perhaps not the best question to ask your question to, but all of those are in practice answerable to the elected House of Commons. And none of them can change the law without the elected Government or the Commons approving it.
Not the case with the EU which could circumvent the Commons.
But only by using powers the Commons had granted to it. So no difference.
Ah, yes, the old "we were always sovereign" nonsense. The only democratic control we ever had over the EU was the right to leave it. Still wondering why the referendum went as it did?
I do understand that feeling. But I don't see that we as a country had significantly less control over the EU than (say) the people of Greater Manchester do over the UK government. It's all indirect, at both levels. I have never elected my MP, only once voted for a party that formed the next government. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you are outvoted by everyone else. Same in the EU.
The people of Manchester get to elect a representative who can actually propose and make laws. An MEP cannot do that. At best they can stop laws being passed. All laws are proposed and prepared by the Commission, not the Parliament. There is a fundamental difference in the powers vested in the two types of politician.
But the Commission was appointed by governments. Who we voted for. I do agree there was an extra level of abstraction, which is not ideal. (MPs in each country--> Governments --> Commission)
Immaterial. That is like saying that the country should be run by the civil servants.
One of the points of all of this for me is that it is a strikeback against the principle of ever more distant unrepresentative government. It is the reason that I would like to see Scottish Independence and far more devolved Government down to the lowest levels. The more distant government is from the people the less representative it becomes. This does not mean that the EU Parliament was undemocratic nor that the Commission is a dictatorship. It is all a continuum and it has, in my opinion, drifted far too far in the direction of distant, less representative government. Hence my strong and continued support for Brexit and my desire to see us go further in terms of decentralising power in the UK ad reducing the power of politicians and civil servants.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
Well that's lucky. What will come first, the end of the world or the end of the England second innings? Could be tight.
From what I remember from Blair WMDs take 45 minutes, the England second innings surely can take less time than that?
I’d actually missed that there was proper cricket going on at Lord’s this week, thought it was this hundred bollocks. Sadly looks like an innings defeat coming up.
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
I am scared of many things. Aliens, AI, Wokeness, Putin, new avian flu, a sudden unexplained lack of wine (and also intrigued by some of them) but I can also assure you that I am not remotely scared that Brexit will be reversed and we will “rejoin”. The political obstacles between us and that make it unthinkable for 30 years. By which time the aliens will have taken over the planet from the cold dead birds with AI brains, so who cares
I just like winding up Remoaners. Because they are so easy to wind up. That should be pretty bloody obvious by now
Yes of course and it is your right to do so and good luck with it. I felt super relieved in 2019 when Corbyn lost and I probably wasn't beyond pointing out my happiness to the various Corbyn-supporting Labour supporters then and afterwards.
But what I never said to any of them, no matter how much I disagreed with their policies (even @BJO for heaven's sake) is that they should shut up and not discuss Lab vs Cons any more, or their particular preference for Lab leader.
And yet when we discuss an equally live political topic, Brexit, plenty on here want no more discussion and berate posters ( @Scott_xP in this instance this morning) when they post about it.
Moreso the irony when he was posting leavers' views on Brexit. So even leavers discuss it still.
Again, wrong
@Scott_xP was advised to desist. On the grounds of his mental health. And I concur with that
Watching someone - clearly distressed by Brexit - mention Brexit incessantly day after day, is not a pretty sight. Like watching a man, deserted by his wife six years ago, who still spends his days saying “she was a heartless bitch AND I never loved her anyway, look here’s a photo of her in a bikini”
It’s not good. Stop
Nah that's bollocks. No one on here gets to comment on someone else's mental health apart from their own. Or they shouldn't if they don't want to make themselves look like a c**t.
You don't get to say who should post what or why.
Stick to your Regents Park railing painting revelations.
Going to Leon for mental health advice would be like asking Dura_Ace to advise on road safety.
I taught one of our Ukrainians to drive! I got her to overtake a dawdling VW Caddy by going to the wrong way round a roundabout flat out. She executed a very precise late apex and that's 100% down to my didactic technique.
Re immigration. This will increasingly return as an issue, especially the channel migrants
I read an interview with the likely new Italian PM last night. A hard right leader. The article explained her rise as being due to extreme levels of illegal migration that dwarf those in Britain
We might get 40k channel migrants this year and it is doubling every couple of years or less. It will soon be a massive debate if this continues
And Farage would then look to seize his chance as Meloni has in Italy
Farage doesn't have the discipline or inclination required to make serious inroads in domestic politics.
He got 12% of the UK vote at the 2015 General election, 3 times the 4% Meloni's Brothers of Italy got at the 2018 general election
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
If anything is shit, it's not Brexit but the cumulative legacy of failed policies pushed by both parties that led to Brexit. By repeating that Brexit is shit you're not rolling the pitch for rejoin but advertising the fact that you haven't understood why we left.
Brexit is simply doubling down on those failed policies, with added pointless red tape. I understand perfectly why we left, but you seemingly don't understand that leaving hasn't helped and never will.
It will if we use it to make politicians more accountable. That is the opportunity we have now which we did not have before.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
I think there's something in that.
I also think that the Russians are sheltering their artillery in there, which is highly dangerous, and I think they probably are going to disconnect it from the Ukrainian grid, which will be awful for Ukrainians.
I don't share the PB consensus that whilst the Russians do all this, Ukrainian forces are quietly refraining from doing anything to the plant. We're dealing with war, it's messy and nasty, and it just doesn't seem likely.
Video from 2018 of US Embassy staff discussing impact of Brexit and the government’s approach to it. Wish I could be arsed to transcribe the choice lines from it. Worth a watch anyway.
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
More significantly- look at the age profile of Leave/Remain in 2016 and Good Idea/Bad Idea, and Stay Out/Rejoin now.
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
My generation, who actually remembered the war and the immediate aftermath, were offered no more war war & grabbed it with both hands. Those a few years younger, whose 'wartime' memories were formed by Biggles and the like rejected the idea of Membership, but for those a bit younger it seemed a good idea. We who remembered the war are now dying out and now so are the Biggles generation. In a few years time those who who freely Inter-railed, worked in Europe and so on, and who resent restrictions on their freedom, will be the vast majority, and will vote to go back!
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Ukraine's biggest mistake was giving up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees that have turned out to be worthless.
NATO is not going to go to war for Ukraine. Indirect support such as supplying them with arms is as far as we're going to go.
I expect a lot of nuclear proliferation from non-nuclear states over the next decade or so.
Perhaps we should cut out the middle man and give the Ukrainians a suitcase nuke and a first class ticket to Moscow?
Putin thinks that the Ukrainians will do just that, using the contents of the expended fuel rod ponds at the Ukrainian power stations, the moment they can.
Yep, that's why I said cut out the middle man.
It's a rare example of where I think Putin is probably right - Ukraine has seen the limits of western support against a nuclear superpower, so it makes sense that they will seek to re-develop nuclear weapons of their own.
Even if Russia is pushed back to its borders, long term having their own nuclear weapons is probably the only guarantee of territorial integrity.
Would Russia have invaded if they knew the Ukrainians still had nukes?
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
I think Schengen would be great actually. A truly frictionless border. No more hours at passport control. Through trains from Glasgow or Manchester to Paris. We would have to make changes to our welfare system first. I don't think we should join the Euro any time soon though. We could renegotiate a Denmark style opt out or go for the Sweden model of a de facto opt out.
You would still need luggage scanning for the Eurostar, for security reasons, but less friction certainly.
We’d also need to keep security on ferries and the tunnel. Do we really want people driving vans full of guns into the country when we’ve worked so hard to eliminate them?
Also, you now have 500,000 asylum seekers a year instead of 100,000. This would be quite hard to manage.
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
The closest we're seeing to racism in this thread, and even that isn't it, is @nico679 banging on about how immigration isn't down when Brexit wasn't said to be about cutting immigration it was about controlling it.
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Just pushes up house prices. Demand side answer to nimbyism.
Homeowner are you?
We have plenty of land to build on. Just build more houses and immigration isn't an issue.
People advocating both NIMBYism and high immigration are the problem, like the Lib Dems. People advocating immigration combined with house building is entirely reasonable.
Yes it is an issue, we are already one of the most densely populated nations on the planet.
If the government does not get a grip on non EU immigration as it has reduced EU immigration and cut cost of living it will likely lose the redwall and the next general election whether Truss or Sunak is PM. Building all over the greenbelt would just seal its fate, as scores of Home counties seats would follow Chesham and Amersham and go LD
I couldn't care less if you lose your Home Counties seat.
Where are the opinion polls showing Red Wall voters are unhappy with immigration today? The fact you've never visited the Red Wall in your life, let alone lived here, shows why like Theresa May you reduce everything down to "cut immigration" despite not having voted for it.
We wouldn't lose Epping Forest but we will lose lots of seats in Surrey, Bucks, Oxfordshire etc to the LDs building all over the greenbelt.
What we're the biggest issues working class redwall voters gave for voting for Brexit, regaining sovereignty AND reducing immigration. If the Tories have not done that by the next general election overall despite ending free movement they will lose the redwall seats too
Plus why is everyone whining about Brexit discussions - talking to you, here, leavers.
Take a leaf out of your role model Nigel's book. He didn't stop talking about it for decades. It is a live political debate and there are two sides to it, actually more, given differing potential relationships with the EU.
Did you expect the Labour Party to shut up and go home after the 2019 general election? Or the Cons to disband in 1997 after the GE then? No. Of course not.
So Brexit will continue to be discussed. And my take on it is that the eg @Leons of this world are only so vituperative about it because they are scared. A bit like a dog barking. It is doing it because it is scared most of the time.
Don't be scared, @Leon, have confidence in your fellow citizens to handle democracy.
If the former Remainers were actively advocating Rejoining, that would be fine. That's a damn sight different from moaning - moe than six years on - that they lost a democratic vote.
But they aren't moaning about losing the vote, not in the main. They are moaning that Brexit is shit. Which they have every right to do, especially as Brexit is in fact shit. Many Remainers are advocating Rejoining too, but Labour won't touch this for a while because marginals are full of Leavers who haven't yet changed their minds/died. Most Remainers who want us to Rejoin, like me, reluctantly accept this electoral realism. We are patient. At the same time, we are rolling the pitch by pointing out that Brexit is shit.
You pretty much are. "This is shit" is absolutely nothing more than a moan.
No I'm not, I am moaning about Brexit and its negative impact, which is absolutely legitimate in a democracy. Do you think that criticising government policies shouldn't be allowed?
Allowed, yes. But it's far more credible when you have an alternative.
I've already said that my alternative is to rejoin.
Great. Then extol the benefits of Rejoining (especially with respect to joining the euro and Schengen). Hopefully you can do it in a better way than the Remain campaign extolled the benefits of Remaining.
Loving the parenthesis which predicts with great accuracy the racist underpinnings of the Stay Out campaign. Dirty foreign money... blue passports on steroids.
The British public didn't want to join the euro in the late 90s, which is why Blair never tried. I can't see that has changed in the intervening period...
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
Not immediately, actually. I spent literally years taking @AlastairMeeks pbuh to task for saying that the fundamental driver of Brexit was racism. I have concluded that, as is often the case, he was bang on the money. So no immediacy about it.
Tbf it was pretty far out at that point to consider that a proposition supported by Farage, Griffin, Tommeh R, the Le Pens, Trump, Starkey, Morrisey, BNP, NF, The Sun, The Express, Spiked and Right Said Fred could in any way be racist.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
This sort of apocalyptic escalation was always a possibility since we decided to get involved in the latest iteration of a long running border dispute in the arse crack of Eastern Europe that had nothing to do with us.
Not a border dispute, unless you're arguing Ukraine has no borders at all. And a good half dozen NATO members disagree with your latter point.
But yes, there was a case for handing over the country, even if I disagree. What about the rest of the ex WarPac states ?
The most astonishing figure of the day is German producer prices. Up more than five per cent on the month. Up more than thirty five per cent on the year!
Anybody remember what happened the last time the Germans had rampant inflation....?
Morning all. Just in reports of explosions around Zaporizhzhia, no other details yet. Ukraine's energy people sayuig Russia are planning to disconnect the NPP from the Ukraine grid today, some concern over the spent fuel rods.
The Russians are playing with fire here, both figuratively and literally.
There’s nothing more likely to result in a Western escalation, than a nuclear ‘accident’ at Zaporizhzhia.
If Putin wants to see NATO countries send their armies into Ukraine, he’s going the right way about it.
The theory on the Telegraph Ukraine podcast yesterday was that Putin likes to provoke these crises so that he can gain leverage/kudos for ending them. They drew a parallel with the grain blockade, where there is now a deal allowing a limited quantity of Ukrainian grain exports.
So the idea would be that Putin provokes a nuclear crisis, but then agrees to resolve it in return for something - perhaps a ceasefire on the current front lines, or some limit on Western arms supplies, or just so that he can look good on Russian State TV.
The danger is that there is a miscalculation, a mistake, and a disaster happens.
I tend to think that it's a rather charitable interpretation of Putin's motivation and decision-making, similar to the analysis before the February invasion that saw the military buildup as a means to extract diplomatic concessions. But, well, fingers crossed, eh?
A nuclear "accident" in Ukraine renders large chunks of Ukraine economically unusable for decades. Putin would love that.
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
In reality all Biden would do is tighten sanctions and at most do an air strike and even that unlikely.
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Poland is a NATO nation. Chunks of it will get irradiated.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
The Western leaders who are not going to go to World War 3 with a nuclear missile armed Russia because a bit of radiation drifts into Eastern Poland. I am sorry, that is just realpolitik reality
Robert Colvile @rcolvile I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
Well that's lucky. What will come first, the end of the world or the end of the England second innings? Could be tight.
From what I remember from Blair WMDs take 45 minutes, the England second innings surely can take less time than that?
I’d actually missed that there was proper cricket going on at Lord’s this week, thought it was this hundred bollocks. Sadly looks like an innings defeat coming up.
Comments
See also "mellifluous".
If you wanted to take a windfarm out, you would hit the (rather delicate) transformers rather than the individual turbines.
For offshore windfarms, there are also stations on land that perform similar roles. Again, juicy targets.
The sad thing is that our entire electricity system is vulnerable. The National Grid does an amazing job keeping things running, but it would not take many simultaneous failures of (say) transformers to have regional or national effects. And these transformers would be hard to replace as well.
If I really wanted to screw with a nation, I'd take out their electricity. It would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in the long term, and could be a non-nuclear strike.
In the UK it is zero levels divorced. You vote for MPs, who initiate and debate laws.
In the EU it is two levels divorced. You vote for MPs, who choose the Government, who choose the Commission who initiate the laws.
That is why there is a UK Leader of the Opposition but no EU Leader of the Opposition.
Having a pan-European lender of last resort to European banks rather than a British lender of last resort to British banks.
But I'm loving the way you immediately play the racism card.
https://twitter.com/marieannuk/status/1560372452160593921?s=21&t=k0IIfVqlUQo74z5Swew2cw
I like these replies:
Brexit is never going away, because it will continue to be shit. And an ever increasing percentage of the population will know it’s shit. And there will be political consequences for that. Might take 5 years, might be 10. But they’re coming.
I think it was pointless to damaging - which of those being nearer the truth depending on execution and follow up. As it turns out we've gone for damaging - a botch job driven by silly nationalistic willy waving and softhead "great and special country" sentiment. This was always likely - because of the sort of people driving the project - but it wasn't imo inevitable.
What we could have done was Brexited in a careful statesmanlike pragmatic way, keeping good close relations with Europe and combining this with competent government at home. This would have given us a far better Brexit outcome, one towards the more positive 'pointless' end of the spectrum. Maybe - being ultra optimistic but why not - it could have reached the absolute best outcome of UTTERLY pointless.
And in fact - getting carried away with positivity now - in the grand scheme of things, remembering it's only been a couple of years since we left the EU, it is still very possible imo that we can get to the optimum endstate in time. We just have to drop all our nonsense. If we do that, eg stop electing vacuous populists, then with a bit of luck and a following wind the dream of an utterly pointless Brexit is still on.
Wife said: "Just as well England didn't score many then."
She's not wrong...
Overall surveys tend to show people are happier with immigration now that its controlled than they were in the past when it was uncontrolled. That is surely a good thing?
And immigration has been liberalised for skilled non-EU immigration, which is something many Leavers advocated for as a reason to Leave before the referendum. Unless you're racist and think that non-Europeans are bad or worse, liberalising skilled immigration for non-Europeans is surely a good thing?
Homeowner are you?
Or do you have sole license to troll ?
How long would it take fall out from Ukraine to disperse over the Alos?
That could be fun! So many of the problems (which mainly aren't strikes) are directly mandated by the DfT. Their bean counters have directed franchises to reduce driver head counts and route cards. So lets say they impose a pay settlement - how does that "modernise" the railway and how does it miraculously fix the refusal to pay for sufficient drivers?
Reminds me of when Chris Failing was Transport Secretary, when a catastrofuck timetable fiasco which ground much of northern england to an unreliable fault. His repeatedly stated solution was a "digital railway" to use computer technology which didn't exist to provide a solution that wouldn't work if it did.
I think the reality here is simple. As the government has gone on strike for the summer, DafT are saying "no, you're on strike" to divert attention from their own strike.
People advocating both NIMBYism and high immigration are the problem, like the Lib Dems. People advocating immigration combined with house building is entirely reasonable.
Rupert Harrison
@rbrharrison
·
19m
This not just another energy shock / cost of living squeeze. It's a once in a generation threat to the solvency of many households and businesses that could scar the economy for years to come
https://twitter.com/rbrharrison/status/1560578927718010880
But surely Stokes' fields yesterday evening and the weird reluctance to take the new ball this morning are right up there. Was being only 100 behind not enough of a challenge?
Putin needs to be told that a Russian engineered/black flag release of radiation in Ukraine will be treated as a nuclear attack on NATO every bit as much as if ICBM's had been launched at Poland, Germany, Western Europe. The radiation would predictably be affecting those countries as much as Ukraine. Every sanction up to nuclear retaliation will be available in that situation.
If the government does not get a grip on non EU immigration as it has reduced EU immigration and cut cost of living it will likely lose the redwall and the next general election whether Truss or Sunak is PM. Building all over the greenbelt would just seal its fate, as scores of Home counties seats would follow Chesham and Amersham and go LD
Rupert Harrison
@rbrharrison
·
14m
A supply shock that will lead to a big reduction in purchasing power and therefore a negative demand shock for many other sectors
We saw an example of this from @TSE on Wednesday - the easiest solution for his employer is to close their office for months and subsidise their worker's home heating costs.
Impact of that will be felt by train companies (fewer passengers) and the coffee shops round his Manchester Office.
Flannels will also have a reduction in sales in their Manchester store but that may be compensated by increased purchases in Sheffield...
A kind of Sliding Doors @Leon
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/19/james-purefoy-fishermans-friends-brexit-sex-education
Europe waking up to Starship/New Armstrong? Or will it fade away into ButWeNeedToSpendLotsOnNotMuchCapability ?
@rcolvile
I see Rishi has joined Liz in highlighting the scourge of solar panels on our precious farmland. We have 23 million acres of farmland. Even if we quintuple solar output (the govt's target), it would take up roughly 1/200th of it. Also you can usually still farm on the land!
https://twitter.com/rcolvile/status/1560538139730509824
===
More evidence that ageing Tory membership don't want to deal with the future.
He has sown the dragons teeth and watered them with much blood. He fears the crop....
Leaving was the idea, mainly, of the retired. Those who were born and grew up in the 1950's, for whom Europe was always a dangerous innovation and a diminution of Britain's proper place in the world. They weren't keen on the EEC in 1975 either, and any explanation of why the UK voted out in 2016 has to take account of that. It's not people become more Eurosceptical as they age, it's that one specific generation have frankly never been keen on the whole shebang.
Whilst wishing them all long and happy lives, that generation (who was it who recently suggested John Lydon as their mascot?) will not be with us forever, and are already beginning to go to that place where there are no Euroreferenda. And unless Brexit goes so brilliantly that minds are changed then the attitude of the UK towards integration with our near neighbours will look rather different in 2026 to 2016, end even more so in 2036. (Hint: so far, hardly anyone's mind is being changed, and what net drift there is is towards the UK having dropped a clanger.)
This isn't about whether continued Brexit, Brapprochment or Brejoin are objectively the right things for the country to do. It's just the numbers of people with different instincts. And that may change, though it's not obvious how, and saying "like what we voted for you, ungrateful children-of-unmarried-parents" won't help, I'm sure.
Though the way that some are triggered by the idea that maybe we're making a mistake that could be reversed in future... sometimes there's a bit of more generalised raging at the dying of the light going on. After all, who wants their entry in the history books to be a massive cockup?
I read an interview with the likely new Italian PM last night. A hard right leader. The article explained her rise as being due to extreme levels of illegal migration that dwarf those in Britain
We might get 40k channel migrants this year and it is doubling every couple of years or less. It will soon be a massive debate if this continues
Unless a NATO nation is involved whatever happens in Ukraine we just continue supplying weapons and imposing sanctions and not much more
Where are the opinion polls showing Red Wall voters are unhappy with immigration today? The fact you've never visited the Red Wall in your life, let alone lived here, shows why like Theresa May you reduce everything down to "cut immigration" despite not having voted for it.
Have you down as a Centrist so I find this a bit worrying - if you really mean it rather feeling you had to say it for balance.
We should give Russia Schleswig-Holstein and Corsica, in return for 10 years free gas.
That would be realpolitik.
NATO is not going to go to war for Ukraine. Indirect support such as supplying them with arms is as far as we're going to go.
I expect a lot of nuclear proliferation from non-nuclear states over the next decade or so.
Perhaps we should cut out the middle man and give the Ukrainians a suitcase nuke and a first class ticket to Moscow?
One of the points of all of this for me is that it is a strikeback against the principle of ever more distant unrepresentative government. It is the reason that I would like to see Scottish Independence and far more devolved Government down to the lowest levels. The more distant government is from the people the less representative it becomes. This does not mean that the EU Parliament was undemocratic nor that the Commission is a dictatorship. It is all a continuum and it has, in my opinion, drifted far too far in the direction of distant, less representative government. Hence my strong and continued support for Brexit and my desire to see us go further in terms of decentralising power in the UK ad reducing the power of politicians and civil servants.
I also think that the Russians are sheltering their artillery in there, which is highly dangerous, and I think they probably are going to disconnect it from the Ukrainian grid, which will be awful for Ukrainians.
I don't share the PB consensus that whilst the Russians do all this, Ukrainian forces are quietly refraining from doing anything to the plant. We're dealing with war, it's messy and nasty, and it just doesn't seem likely.
We who remembered the war are now dying out and now so are the Biggles generation. In a few years time those who who freely Inter-railed, worked in Europe and so on, and who resent restrictions on their freedom, will be the vast majority, and will vote to go back!
It's a rare example of where I think Putin is probably right - Ukraine has seen the limits of western support against a nuclear superpower, so it makes sense that they will seek to re-develop nuclear weapons of their own.
Even if Russia is pushed back to its borders, long term having their own nuclear weapons is probably the only guarantee of territorial integrity.
Would Russia have invaded if they knew the Ukrainians still had nukes?
We’d also need to keep security on ferries and the tunnel. Do we really want people driving vans full of guns into the country when we’ve worked so hard to eliminate them?
Also, you now have 500,000 asylum seekers a year instead of 100,000. This would be quite hard to manage.
Poland says it has suffered the consequences of an armed attack. Who is going to argue?
What we're the biggest issues working class redwall voters gave for voting for Brexit, regaining sovereignty AND reducing immigration. If the Tories have not done that by the next general election overall despite ending free movement they will lose the redwall seats too
But yes, there was a case for handing over the country, even if I disagree.
What about the rest of the ex WarPac states ?
Anybody remember what happened the last time the Germans had rampant inflation....?