- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
We should vote Remain because it will drive @SeanT quite mad.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
The problem went deeper than just the campaign. British European policy since Maastricht was focused on securing opt-outs and insulating ourselves from things we regarded as misguided, most notably the single currency. It's very difficult to run a positive campaign for a negative deal.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
Brexiteers claimed "nobody was threatening our place in the single market" which I think is pretty close to claiming we would still be in it...
I don't think every Brexiteer said the same thing. I voted remain, but also believed that a free trade agreement was essentially the same as being in the single market. I was wrong - I'm not an expert in markets and trade, and I think it was a common belief amongst those who voted to leave. They wanted the trade without the politics.
There are three options for dealing with border queues to the EU (1) stop travelling (2) take your chances with the delays, cancellations and extra cost in the full knowledge that it used to be much better and it didn't need to be like this (3) negotiate a new agreement with the EU to bring the UK closer to where it was before and to the EU.
As (2) is not likely to go away, I suspect governments will want to explore (3).
Hasn't Portugal already implemented 3? Because, you know, they value our tourists?
Individual countries have always had the ability to implement eGates, and to treat EEA and UK citizens equally. Portugal announced their intention to roll out the gates at all major airports last year. When I flew to Rome in September, they had them too. In Austria in March, the gates were installed (and the signs included the British flag) but the official apologised that they were not yet working for British passport holders.
The reality is that eGates are being implemented at all major airports across Europe, and they will (largely) treat EEA and UK passport holders equally.
This is a spectactular non-issue, except in places where people travel by car (Dover) or where space for eGates is limited, such as railway stations.
In fact, my experience of some EU destinations (e.g. Canary Islands) is that e-gates are in place and most Brits have the right passports for them but many EU citizens do not. So we queue less than they do.
ISO/IEC 7501-1:2008 has been obligatory since 2012, so I don't think that's going to last.
Won't some or many EU citizens be travelling on ID cards, not having a passport? Do the ID cards work in eGates?
If they've left the Schengen zone, then surely they'll have had to take their passport with them?
No, you can travel throughout the EU with just a national ID card. The only reason why UK citizens could not do that (pre-brexit) is because the UK has no national ID card.
Eh?
If the EU citizens are traveling around the Schengen zone, then they won't be going through passport gates at all.
If they are going through passport gates, it must be because they are traveling from outside the Schengen zone which - except for very few exceptions (like Ireland) - means they will need to carry a passport.
Yup. I know Jersey just had to make a law tweak to allow French day-trippers in and out on their French ID cards as it caused an almost extinction of French school trips as so few have passports which not only wasn’t ideal economically for the island but also reduced the links between Jersey and Normandy and Brittany culturally.
Do we have a final result in the fishing wars, yet?
All seems fine. Once the relevant local authorities were allowed to speak directly rather than via the two governments and they, along with the fishers applied common sense rather than extremist readings of the legal texts the net result was they all went back to fishing as usual.
Long letter from EHRC to Badenoch on clarifying “sex” = “biological sex”
On balance, we believe that redefining ‘sex’ in EqA to mean biological sex would create rationalisations, simplifications, clarity and/or reductions in risk for maternity services, providers and users of other services, gay and lesbian associations, sports organisers and employers. It therefore merits further consideration.
The potential implications of this change should be carefully identified and considered, with due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty and in particular any possible disadvantages for trans men and trans women.
The fact that there is even any need for a proposal to 'redefine' sex to mean, err, sex, shows how completely through the looking glass this has got.
The problem is the EA sometimes uses “sex” and “gender” as synonyms…..more innocent times….
You need to be very careful confusing the two: only the other day I sidled up to my wife and said "the kids are out, do you fancy heading upstairs for some gender", and she looked at me as if I was quite mad.
I'm told there's a concept of 'maintenance sex', where the woman consents to sex to help maintain the relationship.
So you could try 'Can I schedule some maintenance for Saturday night?'.
Might be good if the wife isn't available that you could use a different partner to fill in, a bit like tennis or squash?
I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
Brexiteers claimed "nobody was threatening our place in the single market" which I think is pretty close to claiming we would still be in it...
And then a Remainer became PM and promptly eliminated the option.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't until you've failed another couple of times.
I didn't say they "missed a trick", that's a complete invention on your part. What's that you bang on about arguing in good faith?
The conclusion is that the Remain campaign used the most persuasive arguments they had available, which were all negative arguments. There were positive, honest arguments to be made for the Project of ever-closer union, as well as for the principles of the Four Freedoms, but I wouldn't pretend they would have been referendum-winning ones.
Ok, I like the change. This is no longer 100% drivel. A definite hats off. But what are we going to do about your umpteen posts to this point saying Remain lost because they didn't make positive arguments for EU membership? I don't think we should just leave them there. Don't think you'd want that either. Can the Mods sort it maybe?
I made a small SpreadEx bet on sterling in the wake of Sunak's deal, and it's been very profitable.
I can't decide whether I should let it run (I think Sterling is heading to 1.35 in the medium term), or close out half the position to bank some profits.
It might be somewhat simplistic - and puts me in the same camp as the zerohedge nutters, but I’ve come to the view relative real interest rate expectations are the main factor that accounts for currency movements.
I think you’re giving Sunak too much credit.
Well done on your bet, but don’t give up your day job to trade forex!
NEW If/when he wins an election, it is likely @Keir_Starmer will be the least popular opposition leader to win a majority in recent history - normally (Blair/Cameron) you have to be well above net zero - he's on minus 20 for satisfaction
That is a fabulous basis on which to assume power. Good majority, low expectations. An absolute dream combo.
“Good majority?” There’s only so far “not the Tories” will take them….and ask Liz Truss how starting with low expectations worked out…
I'm pretty confident Labour will win comfortably. My central forecast for their seats is 340 with more upside than downside potential.
I'm less sure. There is not, yet, a groundswell of optimism about Starmer and Labour. There is a groundswell behind voting the Conservatives out. Sunak is doing ok - but the economic damage has been done and is hurting a lot of folk. But it doesn't feel like 1997 yet, and Labour has yet to have the full fire of the media on it scrutinising everything. Already they seem to have used the windfall tax for five different projects.
I'm pretty sure I want Starmer in power. I wouldn't be averse to a coalition - the last one was my 'favourite' government of recent times. I don't think anything is set in stone yet though.
The Eurostar is 5x more inconvenient than it was pre-Br*x*t.
They have erected a whole new set of gates at STP and also GdN and you have to be there hours before the off time instead of around 40-50mins as per hitherto.
That makes Eurostar a pretty awful experience. I am due to travel there on my way to San Sebastian in two weeks time. I'm not looking forward to it.
Yeah, I pass through St Pancras quite often, and the queues for the Eurostar look horrendous every time.
It used to feel like a very elegant and simple way to travel abroad, a sign of a confident capital and an outward-looking nation. Now has a crappy parochial drabness, inefficient and glum - the glorious architecture housing it now serving to underline the decline to this point, like the shanty town T.E. Lawrence found in Krak des Chevaliers. Sad.
Yep. I had a decade between trips and the difference was stark. The first was a relaxed pleasant journey, the latter like boarding a plane and I hate flying, not because of the actual flying but the bit before and after.
Ditto, I'm afraid. Used to glide in there, straight through, glass of bubbly and a dish of nuts at the trackside bar, then whoosh, off to Paris. The very definition of travel as pleasure. Now, all a bit of a drag. Just another A to B experience.
Last time I went on Eurostar, admittedly some years back now, I thought the carriages were starting to look very dog-eared. Have they smartened them up recently?
New Class 374s have been introduced in recent years, as opposed to the original 1990s-vintage Class 373s.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't until you've failed another couple of times.
I didn't say they "missed a trick", that's a complete invention on your part. What's that you bang on about arguing in good faith?
The conclusion is that the Remain campaign used the most persuasive arguments they had available, which were all negative arguments. There were positive, honest arguments to be made for the Project of ever-closer union, as well as for the principles of the Four Freedoms, but I wouldn't pretend they would have been referendum-winning ones.
Ok, I like the change. This is no longer 100% drivel. A definite hats off. But what are we going to do about your umpteen posts to this point saying Remain lost because they didn't make positive arguments for EU membership? I don't think we should just leave them there. Don't think you'd want that either. Can the Mods sort it maybe?
They can't sort out your misunderstanding, be it deliberate or otherwise - you'll have to do that for yourself.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
Putin said he invaded Ukraine because he didn’t want NATO on Russia’s border. Well congratulations, the border between Russia and NATO is now twice as long as it was a year ago.
And if he were to somehow annex Ukraine and Belarus it will be much longer still.
He didn't think this through, did he?
No, that a feature. Not a bug
So after invading Ukraine he would need to invade the rest of Eastern Europe. Then Western Europe.
Until there is no more border with NATO....
Clearly you have both thought it through very carefully, whereas short-arsed Putin is stupid and crazy, has very smelly armpits, and doesn't know shit about strategy and warfare and international relations and that kinda stuff. He'd get bested by a Brit on an internet forum any day of the week. After all, look at what Putin forces his comms team to advise him to say, on pain of giving them all stiff interviews without any coffee whatsoever and then sending them to Siberian salt mines. Cobblers about taking Warsaw in two weeks flat, etc. etc.
NEW If/when he wins an election, it is likely @Keir_Starmer will be the least popular opposition leader to win a majority in recent history - normally (Blair/Cameron) you have to be well above net zero - he's on minus 20 for satisfaction
They shouldn’t be protected at all. That is the point.
I love seeing squirrel (grey in my area) and I've never understood why we should be actively intervening to kill one type of squirrel to protect another. Because they're foreign? Prejudice agasinst foreign humans is bad enough, but who needs ecoxenophobia?
Wonderful animals. So bright and every one with their own personality. I feed them daily when I'm here. They are quite the most interesting and ingenious animals I've ever interacted with. I find them much more interesting than the Reds. My cousin in a nature writer and she lathes the idea of 'native species' which is a big thing in Scotland. She thinks it's typical of the Nationalist mentality!
Sorry but these comments are just stupid and ignorant and I would certainly have expected better from Nick even if not from you. Your cousin sounds like a moron.
The reason that most sensible naturalists and wildlife experts have a problem with some non native species is because they drive native species to extinction. Ecosystems build up over millennia to a point of natural balance. When you then suddenly introduce a non native species it disrupts that balance and can often lead similar native species being pushed into danger. There are hundreds of examples of this since man started transporting animals around the world - cats in Australia being an obvious example.
You might as well claim that there is nothing wrong with white Europeans wiping out the indigenous peoples of North America 'because we were more interesting'. Nationalism has feck all to do with it. Horse Chestnuts and rabbits are both non native species to the British Isles but they do not damage the native populations of other animals and plants so there is no problem with them. If a species of plant or animal is harmless then it is not an issue. But diversity of species is what is matters. Grey squirrels have driven reds to extinction in many parts of the British Isles. Hence the reason they need to be controlled.
So that nature conforms with your idea of what is right.
Thank goodness you're only an internet numpty rather than a billionaire donor who could influence government policy.
I'm slightly surprised that Richard's (quite eloquently put) position is being seen as anything but the mainstream opinion it is. Humans nowadays usually try very hard to avoid introducing non-native species which could wipe out native species - this isn't out of an idea of 'what is right' but in an attempt to avoid yet another extinction.
Try to import a non-native species into New Zealand and see where it gets you.
Of course, all points of view are contestable, but the point of view that invasive species such as grey squirrels and Japanese knotweed in Great Britain and, say, rats on South Georgia should be controlled isn't really controversial.
So you are a wolf-introducer, then?
Well first of all what a wonderful category of thing to be. "What do you do? I'm a wolf-introducer."
Wolf introduction is a slightly different matter - that's not necessarily protecting existing species but reintroducing ones which have gone. But to me the case for doing so (to manage the population of deer, which is inimical to the population of birch forest, which is detrimental to other native species) seems stronger than the case for not doing so. In a controlled way, at certain locations. It's not a straightforward decision, certainly.
Might help with the deer problem in the UK. And the badgers.
Casino Royale's objections to eating venison notwithstanding, I don't see that there is a deer problem. Just increase the cull numbers and let people hunt and eat them. I'd far rather a deer problem than a wolf one. The idea of reintroducing them is deeply stupid.
Deer in high numbers destroy habitats and prevent tree regeneration. I thought we wanted more trees these days?
Povlsen et al have the right idea in Glen Feshie. Having been there in the early 1990s and again recently, the difference a zero tolerance policy has made is extraordinary. A new forest is springing up. And not just the Pines and Birch, also the (currently rare) upland Willows.
I don't agree. Besides, the gratuitous felling of massive mature trees by beavers seems to be accepted with zen-like equanimity by the rewilding brigade. It's all a load of specious nonsense.
They are reintroducing a form of wildcat in the Cairngorms at the moment - everyone in the locality of the scheme is having to spay and tag their cats in case the newcomers take a shine to them and breed feral monsters. The things all but died out, due presumably to lack of food/habitat, so why it isn't considered cruel to release a load more to share a similar fate is beyond me.
The remnants of the original European wildcat population (Scottish subspecies) have been badly affected through interbreeding with feral domestic cats, hence the spaying.
Also habitat loss due to, er, too many deer. Naturally they are being released in a place where the deer are being controlled more aggressively. Possibly even Glen Feshie...
Beavers like to eat riverside trees - particularly poplars and willows. These have evolved to regenerate from the stumps. When humans do this it is called pollarding. This is not the same as the damage deer do by eating the saplings.
Since you are discussing endangered species, I thought I might mention two partial successes:
First, the whooping crane: "After being pushed to the brink of extinction by unregulated hunting and loss of habitat to just 21 wild and two captive whooping cranes by 1941, conservation efforts have led to a limited recovery.[3] The total number of cranes in the surviving migratory population, plus three reintroduced flocks and in captivity, now exceeds 800 birds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whooping_crane
Second, the California condor: "A conservation plan put in place by the United States government led to the capture of all the remaining wild condors by 1987, with a total population of 27 individuals.[8] These surviving birds were bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding, and beginning in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then, their population has grown, but the California condor remains one of the world's rarest bird species. In December 2020 there were 504 California condors living in the wild or in captivity,[9] while by December 2022 the population totaled 537, of which 336 lived in the wild." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor
The steady progress with both species is promising.
And I believe that progress in biology may well make it possible, within the next 50 years, to revive extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, the paddlefish, and the baiji.
(I'd like to hear about successes like those with the crane and the condor in other parts of the world.)
Red kites in the UK. From a globally threatened species to a common sight in the UK after a big push that started 30 years ago
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
Putin said he invaded Ukraine because he didn’t want NATO on Russia’s border. Well congratulations, the border between Russia and NATO is now twice as long as it was a year ago.
And if he were to somehow annex Ukraine and Belarus it will be much longer still.
He didn't think this through, did he?
No, that a feature. Not a bug
So after invading Ukraine he would need to invade the rest of Eastern Europe. Then Western Europe.
Until there is no more border with NATO....
Clearly you have both thought it through very carefully, whereas short-arsed Putin is stupid and crazy, has very smelly armpits, and doesn't know shit about strategy and warfare and international relations and that kinda stuff. He'd get bested by a Brit on an internet forum any day of the week. After all, look at what Putin forces his comms team to advise him to say, on pain of giving them all stiff interviews without any coffee whatsoever and then sending them to Siberian salt mines. Cobblers about taking Warsaw in two weeks flat, etc. etc.
It is of course traitorous to ask what the sane and sensible alternative Russian policy would have been from 2014, or for that matter from 2022, to keep Russia from having more of its border directly facing NATO. But there must have been one, because Putin didn't go to boarding school and he's such a thicko. And I'd tell him to his face. Oh yes I certainly would.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's recovery of the lost territory and its accession to NATO is inevitable and then Belarus will be the next domino. And Putin brought it all on himself.
He sounds like the best gift to the united US-led west that Russia has ever produced.
Since you are discussing endangered species, I thought I might mention two partial successes:
First, the whooping crane: "After being pushed to the brink of extinction by unregulated hunting and loss of habitat to just 21 wild and two captive whooping cranes by 1941, conservation efforts have led to a limited recovery.[3] The total number of cranes in the surviving migratory population, plus three reintroduced flocks and in captivity, now exceeds 800 birds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whooping_crane
Second, the California condor: "A conservation plan put in place by the United States government led to the capture of all the remaining wild condors by 1987, with a total population of 27 individuals.[8] These surviving birds were bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding, and beginning in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then, their population has grown, but the California condor remains one of the world's rarest bird species. In December 2020 there were 504 California condors living in the wild or in captivity,[9] while by December 2022 the population totaled 537, of which 336 lived in the wild." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor
The steady progress with both species is promising.
And I believe that progress in biology may well make it possible, within the next 50 years, to revive extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, the paddlefish, and the baiji.
(I'd like to hear about successes like those with the crane and the condor in other parts of the world.)
Red kites in the UK. From a globally threatened species to a common sight in the UK after a big push that started 30 years ago
They're like vermin round here now. Loads of the buggers...
Seriously - its a nice sight to see a kite flying on the way to work (as happened today).
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
It would decimate the car industry, food supply insecurity would lead to price rises, holiday travel would be more difficult so seats would be rationed and prices would rise, on the other hand were lies that proved more accurate.
I could go on, but we have left, we are not going back so we need to make the best of a poor hand.
Since you are discussing endangered species, I thought I might mention two partial successes:
First, the whooping crane: "After being pushed to the brink of extinction by unregulated hunting and loss of habitat to just 21 wild and two captive whooping cranes by 1941, conservation efforts have led to a limited recovery.[3] The total number of cranes in the surviving migratory population, plus three reintroduced flocks and in captivity, now exceeds 800 birds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whooping_crane
Second, the California condor: "A conservation plan put in place by the United States government led to the capture of all the remaining wild condors by 1987, with a total population of 27 individuals.[8] These surviving birds were bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding, and beginning in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then, their population has grown, but the California condor remains one of the world's rarest bird species. In December 2020 there were 504 California condors living in the wild or in captivity,[9] while by December 2022 the population totaled 537, of which 336 lived in the wild." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor
The steady progress with both species is promising.
And I believe that progress in biology may well make it possible, within the next 50 years, to revive extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, the paddlefish, and the baiji.
(I'd like to hear about successes like those with the crane and the condor in other parts of the world.)
Red kites in the UK. From a globally threatened species to a common sight in the UK after a big push that started 30 years ago
Since you are discussing endangered species, I thought I might mention two partial successes:
First, the whooping crane: "After being pushed to the brink of extinction by unregulated hunting and loss of habitat to just 21 wild and two captive whooping cranes by 1941, conservation efforts have led to a limited recovery.[3] The total number of cranes in the surviving migratory population, plus three reintroduced flocks and in captivity, now exceeds 800 birds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whooping_crane
Second, the California condor: "A conservation plan put in place by the United States government led to the capture of all the remaining wild condors by 1987, with a total population of 27 individuals.[8] These surviving birds were bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding, and beginning in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then, their population has grown, but the California condor remains one of the world's rarest bird species. In December 2020 there were 504 California condors living in the wild or in captivity,[9] while by December 2022 the population totaled 537, of which 336 lived in the wild." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor
The steady progress with both species is promising.
And I believe that progress in biology may well make it possible, within the next 50 years, to revive extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, the paddlefish, and the baiji.
(I'd like to hear about successes like those with the crane and the condor in other parts of the world.)
The story of using light aircraft to train condors to migrate is just brilliant!
If you want to go REALLY retro, ride the 1972-vintage Bakerloo line trains or the 1973-vintage Piccadilly line trains
Leon was expressing disapproval of riding the Bakerloo Line the other day IIRC, not sure what his beef was with it. I love the old Bakerloo line stock - pretty much the only train I remember from my childhood still in operation now that the HSTs are largely retired.
With the discussion on comparing poll scores on the run up to the last local election to now, I just did a very quick and dirty one.
Took the polling scores, took an average over each week since the start of the year (no clever regressions, no weighting by size of poll, and if a poll was in the field for, say, four days split two days into each of two weeks, I simply had it in both weeks), and here we go:
Average scores a very boringly stable this year so far, but Tories have climbed a little over March and Labour have shifted down just a tad since their peak in late January.
(dashed lines are 2019, thick lines are this year).
We should probably bear in mind that Change UK came into existence in late Feb 2019 as well, which makes comparisons a bit more fraught.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
Well the youth of the nation voted Remain. But on the general 'positive v negative' point: (i) EU membership benefits us. We'll be worse off without it. (ii) EU membership benefits us. We are better off keeping it. These are exactly the same message. Neither is positive, neither is negative, both are the plain and simple truth.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
Also, Cameron's "WWIII" line, which got such a bad reception from the pre-briefing that he had to drop it from the speech - but the damage was done.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
My favourite was Stuart Rose, saying that a vote to leave will lead to unskilled wages going up.
Thread on the EHRC response on “sex” = “biological sex”
The @EHRC was asked by ministers whether the protected characteristic of sex in the 2010 Equality Act would benefit from clarification that it refers to biological sex.
It has written back to say yes it would have significant benefits & merits further consideration.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
Also, Cameron's "WWIII" line, which got such a bad reception from the pre-briefing that he had to drop it from the speech - but the damage was done.
Since you are discussing endangered species, I thought I might mention two partial successes:
First, the whooping crane: "After being pushed to the brink of extinction by unregulated hunting and loss of habitat to just 21 wild and two captive whooping cranes by 1941, conservation efforts have led to a limited recovery.[3] The total number of cranes in the surviving migratory population, plus three reintroduced flocks and in captivity, now exceeds 800 birds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whooping_crane
Second, the California condor: "A conservation plan put in place by the United States government led to the capture of all the remaining wild condors by 1987, with a total population of 27 individuals.[8] These surviving birds were bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding, and beginning in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then, their population has grown, but the California condor remains one of the world's rarest bird species. In December 2020 there were 504 California condors living in the wild or in captivity,[9] while by December 2022 the population totaled 537, of which 336 lived in the wild." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor
The steady progress with both species is promising.
And I believe that progress in biology may well make it possible, within the next 50 years, to revive extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, the paddlefish, and the baiji.
(I'd like to hear about successes like those with the crane and the condor in other parts of the world.)
Red kites in the UK. From a globally threatened species to a common sight in the UK after a big push that started 30 years ago
They're like vermin round here now. Loads of the buggers...
Seriously - its a nice sight to see a kite flying on the way to work (as happened today).
Obviously it was having a day in the office rather than wfh.
Since you are discussing endangered species, I thought I might mention two partial successes:
First, the whooping crane: "After being pushed to the brink of extinction by unregulated hunting and loss of habitat to just 21 wild and two captive whooping cranes by 1941, conservation efforts have led to a limited recovery.[3] The total number of cranes in the surviving migratory population, plus three reintroduced flocks and in captivity, now exceeds 800 birds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whooping_crane
Second, the California condor: "A conservation plan put in place by the United States government led to the capture of all the remaining wild condors by 1987, with a total population of 27 individuals.[8] These surviving birds were bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding, and beginning in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then, their population has grown, but the California condor remains one of the world's rarest bird species. In December 2020 there were 504 California condors living in the wild or in captivity,[9] while by December 2022 the population totaled 537, of which 336 lived in the wild." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor
The steady progress with both species is promising.
And I believe that progress in biology may well make it possible, within the next 50 years, to revive extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, the paddlefish, and the baiji.
(I'd like to hear about successes like those with the crane and the condor in other parts of the world.)
Red kites in the UK. From a globally threatened species to a common sight in the UK after a big push that started 30 years ago
European cranes are one species that turned up randomly in the UK (from Holland) without any deliberate introduction after an absence of nearly 400 years.
There was a pair here in the Flatlands that turned up in the late 1990s (this was kept secret, of course). There's a fair few now and there's also a reintroduction programme in Somerset so they aren't quite so hush hush these days. They also turned up in Norfolk naturally, too.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
Well the youth of the nation voted Remain. But on the general 'positive v negative' point: (i) EU membership benefits us. We'll be worse off without it. (ii) EU membership benefits us. We are better off keeping it. These are exactly the same message. Neither is positive, neither is negative, both are the plain and simple truth.
Mathematically, they are equivalent. Emotionally, they are very different. Perhaps the reason that you don't see the difference is that you believed from the outset that they are unquestionable truth. To people who were trying to decide how to vote, they come across as very different messages.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
My favourite was Stuart Rose, saying that a vote to leave will lead to unskilled wages going up.
Although that one did turn out to be true.
Stuart Rose was bound and gagged in a basement for the rest of the campaign.
Alongside Cameron's "Renegotiation". Whose name was never to be uttered.
Since you are discussing endangered species, I thought I might mention two partial successes:
First, the whooping crane: "After being pushed to the brink of extinction by unregulated hunting and loss of habitat to just 21 wild and two captive whooping cranes by 1941, conservation efforts have led to a limited recovery.[3] The total number of cranes in the surviving migratory population, plus three reintroduced flocks and in captivity, now exceeds 800 birds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whooping_crane
Second, the California condor: "A conservation plan put in place by the United States government led to the capture of all the remaining wild condors by 1987, with a total population of 27 individuals.[8] These surviving birds were bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding, and beginning in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then, their population has grown, but the California condor remains one of the world's rarest bird species. In December 2020 there were 504 California condors living in the wild or in captivity,[9] while by December 2022 the population totaled 537, of which 336 lived in the wild." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor
The steady progress with both species is promising.
And I believe that progress in biology may well make it possible, within the next 50 years, to revive extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, the paddlefish, and the baiji.
(I'd like to hear about successes like those with the crane and the condor in other parts of the world.)
The story of using light aircraft to train condors to migrate is just brilliant!
Couple of years ago the BBC had the story of a young woman who accompanied, in a microlight, a flock of swans from Northern Russia to the Severn estuary.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
Also, Cameron's "WWIII" line, which got such a bad reception from the pre-briefing that he had to drop it from the speech - but the damage was done.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
It would decimate the car industry, food supply insecurity would lead to price rises, holiday travel would be more difficult so seats would be rationed and prices would rise, on the other hand were lies that proved more accurate.
I could go on, but we have left, we are not going back so we need to make the best of a poor hand.
The car industry is struggling in other countries too. Food prices rises are mainly down to Ukraine (basic goods like flour and energy). Has there been rationing of seats for travel? Really?
The issue we have is covid and Ukraine has dwarfed other effects. For the man in the street its easy to assume its all down to brexit, especially as a lot of Remainers keep banging that drum.
In reality some things have been contributed to by Brexit.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
Also, Cameron's "WWIII" line, which got such a bad reception from the pre-briefing that he had to drop it from the speech - but the damage was done.
Urban legend.
It's amazing what Driver does and doesn't remember about the Remain campaign.
The core slogan, naah passed Driver by.
A line that wasn't used in a speech? Remembered like it was yesterday.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
My favourite was Stuart Rose, saying that a vote to leave will lead to unskilled wages going up.
Although that one did turn out to be true.
Stuart Rose was bound and gagged in a basement for the rest of the campaign.
Alongside Cameron's "Renegotiation". Whose name was never to be uttered.
Remain really was a Clown Convention.
Most Remainers would agree that the Remain campaign was a bit naff. But gloating over it years after the event is unseemly. What you need to concentrate on now is delivering those Brexit bonuses you promised but which have so far proven to be as rare as rocking-horse shit. Now get to it and stop wasting my time.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
My favourite was Stuart Rose, saying that a vote to leave will lead to unskilled wages going up.
Although that one did turn out to be true.
Stuart Rose was bound and gagged in a basement for the rest of the campaign.
Alongside Cameron's "Renegotiation". Whose name was never to be uttered.
Remain really was a Clown Convention.
Most Remainers would agree that the Remain campaign was a bit naff. But gloating over it years after the event is unseemly. What you need to concentrate on now is delivering those Brexit bonuses you promised but which have so far proven to be as rare as rocking-horse shit. Now get to it and stop wasting my time.
It's not gloating (at least on my part - I was open to being persuaded to vote Remain, after all) - it's essential analysis for the Rejoin campaign that is coming at some point in the future. Maybe a bit premature, though.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
Well the youth of the nation voted Remain. But on the general 'positive v negative' point: (i) EU membership benefits us. We'll be worse off without it. (ii) EU membership benefits us. We are better off keeping it. These are exactly the same message. Neither is positive, neither is negative, both are the plain and simple truth.
An assertion that x benefits us is totally insufficient you actually have to give concrete examples of how it benefits
In relation to the EU yes it had benefits but those benefits were very unequally spread. If you were a manager wanting to employ min wage workers, a middle class home owner wanting a cheap au pair or plumber then sure you got benefits.
For half the country though they couldn't afford a plumber even at the cheaper prices but they did get increased pressure on housing and local services and more competition for low end jobs. I guess they got the benefit of not spending so long in a queue on their once a year trip to spain.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
Also, Cameron's "WWIII" line, which got such a bad reception from the pre-briefing that he had to drop it from the speech - but the damage was done.
Urban legend.
It's amazing what Driver does and doesn't remember about the Remain campaign.
The core slogan, naah passed Driver by.
A line that wasn't used in a speech? Remembered like it was yesterday.
Just another sign of how useless the campaign was if its "core message" didn't resonate with a persuadable voter.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
Also, Cameron's "WWIII" line, which got such a bad reception from the pre-briefing that he had to drop it from the speech - but the damage was done.
Let me get this straight. You really think that Cameron was going to stand up and say, 'Vote Remain or World War III will ensue.' You actually, honestly, totally believe he was planning to say this?
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
My favourite was Stuart Rose, saying that a vote to leave will lead to unskilled wages going up.
Although that one did turn out to be true.
So much so that we are suffering the biggest real term wage cuts in living memory.
Putin said he invaded Ukraine because he didn’t want NATO on Russia’s border. Well congratulations, the border between Russia and NATO is now twice as long as it was a year ago.
And if he were to somehow annex Ukraine and Belarus it will be much longer still.
He didn't think this through, did he?
No, that a feature. Not a bug
So after invading Ukraine he would need to invade the rest of Eastern Europe. Then Western Europe.
Until there is no more border with NATO....
Clearly you have both thought it through very carefully, whereas short-arsed Putin is stupid and crazy, has very smelly armpits, and doesn't know shit about strategy and warfare and international relations and that kinda stuff. He'd get bested by a Brit on an internet forum any day of the week. After all, look at what Putin forces his comms team to advise him to say, on pain of giving them all stiff interviews without any coffee whatsoever and then sending them to Siberian salt mines. Cobblers about taking Warsaw in two weeks flat, etc. etc.
It is instructive to read the diaries of what was going on in Berlin in 1940. It certainly puts paid to the idea that Hitler had this Cunning Plan.
Then again, advice from Baldric would probably have worked out longer term.
The comparison is worth looking at since both Hitler and Putin were riding high on series of lucky dice rolls. Then the gamblers streak ended...
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
The problem went deeper than just the campaign. British European policy since Maastricht was focused on securing opt-outs and insulating ourselves from things we regarded as misguided, most notably the single currency. It's very difficult to run a positive campaign for a negative deal.
And yet they did. The incredibly positive core message of better in than out.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
Also, Cameron's "WWIII" line, which got such a bad reception from the pre-briefing that he had to drop it from the speech - but the damage was done.
Pretty good prediction, turns out. ...Highlighting the bloodshed in the Balkans and Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine, he will add: "Can we be so sure that peace and stability on our continent are assured beyond any shadow of doubt?..
Since you are discussing endangered species, I thought I might mention two partial successes:
First, the whooping crane: "After being pushed to the brink of extinction by unregulated hunting and loss of habitat to just 21 wild and two captive whooping cranes by 1941, conservation efforts have led to a limited recovery.[3] The total number of cranes in the surviving migratory population, plus three reintroduced flocks and in captivity, now exceeds 800 birds." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whooping_crane
Second, the California condor: "A conservation plan put in place by the United States government led to the capture of all the remaining wild condors by 1987, with a total population of 27 individuals.[8] These surviving birds were bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding, and beginning in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then, their population has grown, but the California condor remains one of the world's rarest bird species. In December 2020 there were 504 California condors living in the wild or in captivity,[9] while by December 2022 the population totaled 537, of which 336 lived in the wild." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor
The steady progress with both species is promising.
And I believe that progress in biology may well make it possible, within the next 50 years, to revive extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, the paddlefish, and the baiji.
(I'd like to hear about successes like those with the crane and the condor in other parts of the world.)
The story of using light aircraft to train condors to migrate is just brilliant!
Couple of years ago the BBC had the story of a young woman who accompanied, in a microlight, a flock of swans from Northern Russia to the Severn estuary.
There's a long history of using gliders and microlights to train/fly with birds. I seem to recall one of the pioneers of the Rogallo wing in the 60s was doing that....
I saw @kjh moaning about my plan - potentially - to move to Spain to take advantage of their digital nomad visa. Apparently this is hypocrisy as I voted for Leave. You what??
The scheme, as I understand it, is specifically for non EU citizens. So it’s actually a benefit of Brexit. Couldn’t do it if we were still inside the EU
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
The problem went deeper than just the campaign. British European policy since Maastricht was focused on securing opt-outs and insulating ourselves from things we regarded as misguided, most notably the single currency. It's very difficult to run a positive campaign for a negative deal.
And yet they did. The incredibly positive core message of better in than out.
Oh, dear. You've been comprehensively debunked on this and yet you're still banging on with this untruth.
I saw @kjh moaning about my plan - potentially - to move to Spain to take advantage of their digital nomad visa. Apparently this is hypocrisy as I voted for Leave. You what??
The scheme, as I understand it, is specifically for non EU citizens. So it’s actually a benefit of Brexit. Couldn’t do it if we were still inside the EU
I saw @kjh moaning about my plan - potentially - to move to Spain to take advantage of their digital nomad visa. Apparently this is hypocrisy as I voted for Leave. You what??
The scheme, as I understand it, is specifically for non EU citizens. So it’s actually a benefit of Brexit. Couldn’t do it if we were still inside the EU
But Spain is still inside the EU!
But if the UK was still in the EU I would still be an EU citizen so I could not take advantage of the scheme
One of the greats of species protection is a Kiwi called Rodney Russ. He saved a whole bunch of species in New Zealand from almost certain extinction. I went on a trip to the sub-Antarctic Islands with him.
However, there was one species of NZ wildlife that had always evaded him - the Magenta Petrel. Possibly down to just 100 pairs, nobody really knows. Bloody rare whatever. It nests under the roots of tree ferns in the Chatham Islands. It comes in after dark, departs before light. It had never been photographed in flight. The only known examples for many decades were skins in the collection at Tring. Somebody had a close look at them and thought "These are different..." Knowing nothing about them, they were named after the research ship that collected them - the SS Magenta.
So keen was he to see one that he had manned a searchlight on Chatham to spot them coming in. Without success.
With the Night Parrot of Australia, it could lay claim to be the most elusive bird in the world.
Anyway, on my sub-Antarctic trip, we had two days of fog. Really pissed off the whale-watchers, as it should have been the best of the trip. I was chatting on the bow with a guy (now sadly deceased) who had probably seen more species of whales and dolphins than anyone on the planet. He was so pissed off at the lost opportunity that he had taken up smoking. As he lit up, I noticed a bird coming across the bows from our right. "Get onto this - we haven't seen this before!" I shouted to him. We watched for 30 seconds as the bird drifted in front of us and back into the gloom.
We looked at each other. Then had to work out which of us was going to tell Rodney Russ we had just jammed in on the fabled Magenta Petrel.
He took in good spirit, before probably slinking away for a good cry.
Postscript: The following year, Rodney is running the same trip. At exactly the co-ordinates we had given him, and on a day with beautiful cloudless sky, one flew round the boat for 45 minutes. They managed to get some excellent shots of a Magenta Petrel - the first ever of it in flight.
And then he had the set of all the New Zealand wildlife. I like to think I played a part in that.
We need coherent social policy in Scotland. SNP says you can vote and change your legal sex at 16, but you should not go to jail under 25 - even for rape - as your brain is not fully developed. Irrational policies rooted in cynical political expediency 🤦🏼♀️
I saw @kjh moaning about my plan - potentially - to move to Spain to take advantage of their digital nomad visa. Apparently this is hypocrisy as I voted for Leave. You what??
The scheme, as I understand it, is specifically for non EU citizens. So it’s actually a benefit of Brexit. Couldn’t do it if we were still inside the EU
But Spain is still inside the EU!
But if the UK was still in the EU I would still be an EU citizen so I could not take advantage of the scheme
But the whole point of Leaving was not to have to live in an EU member state!
It is a magnificent irony of Brexit that probably it’s biggest most tangible benefit yet is that millions of us can now leave the UK and go and live in a lovely sunny part of the EU - and pay much less tax than the locals, and other EU citizens
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/04/what-mike-pence-cant-ignore-anymore-00090210 ...Now, Trump’s valet wants to be president. Pence hasn’t announced his candidacy yet — that would be too assertive, too direct, too scrutable. Instead, he’s tracking the presidential campaign scent with visits to Iowa and New Hampshire, and his staff is complaining about the good press Nikki Haley’s campaign is getting. If he really covets more press, let’s give it to him.
And if he really wants to be president, let’s learn a little more about when he was one heartbeat from that office, and the ways he assisted and accommodated Trump.
Yet Pence won’t even cooperate smoothly with the special counsel seeking to investigate the effort to overturn the 2020 election; he’s forcing a judge to compel his testimony.
For the past 15 months, Pence has acted as if bound by some non-disparagement agreement from speaking his mind about the Trump presidency. In the interim, Trump has continued to blast Pence. In January 2022, he excoriated Pence for not overturning the election. In June 2022, he ripped Pence for not having “the courage to act.” In November 2022, when ABC News reporter Jon Karl asked Trump about the “Hang Mike Pence” chant, Trump defended the vitriol, saying, “It’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect.” As recently as three weeks ago, Trump was still targeting Pence, telling reporters, “In many ways you can blame him for Jan. 6.”..
...Pence’s passivity, which ignited the day he signed on as Trump’s running mate and ran full bore until the end of Trump administration, got another boost when the pair left office. As he gathers kindling for his own presidential run, Pence remains tethered to the Trump leash politically, unable to speak his own mind, moving toward 2024 with all the groveling and purpose you might expect from a sloth.
I saw @kjh moaning about my plan - potentially - to move to Spain to take advantage of their digital nomad visa. Apparently this is hypocrisy as I voted for Leave. You what??
The scheme, as I understand it, is specifically for non EU citizens. So it’s actually a benefit of Brexit. Couldn’t do it if we were still inside the EU
But Spain is still inside the EU!
But if the UK was still in the EU I would still be an EU citizen so I could not take advantage of the scheme
However. The irony of you dragging us out of the EU then upping sticks to emigrate to an EU country doesn't seem to have registered.
I saw @kjh moaning about my plan - potentially - to move to Spain to take advantage of their digital nomad visa. Apparently this is hypocrisy as I voted for Leave. You what??
The scheme, as I understand it, is specifically for non EU citizens. So it’s actually a benefit of Brexit. Couldn’t do it if we were still inside the EU
But Spain is still inside the EU!
But if the UK was still in the EU I would still be an EU citizen so I could not take advantage of the scheme
However. The irony of you dragging us out of the EU then upping sticks to emigrate to an EU country doesn't seem to have registered.
Is that an irony I haven’t recognised? Maybe. Not sure. I just called it a “magnificent irony”. It’s certainly not a hypocrisy
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
My favourite was Stuart Rose, saying that a vote to leave will lead to unskilled wages going up.
Although that one did turn out to be true.
Stuart Rose was bound and gagged in a basement for the rest of the campaign.
Alongside Cameron's "Renegotiation". Whose name was never to be uttered.
Remain really was a Clown Convention.
Most Remainers would agree that the Remain campaign was a bit naff. But gloating over it years after the event is unseemly. What you need to concentrate on now is delivering those Brexit bonuses you promised but which have so far proven to be as rare as rocking-horse shit. Now get to it and stop wasting my time.
Not me. I think it's a rewrite of history. The overall standard of the debate for the 2016 referendum was piss-poor but that's how politics is now. If the Remain campaign had been more elevated, relentlessly positive and idealistic, no grim & gloomy warnings about the cultural and economic self-harm Brexit would entail, just Ra Ra Ra on Britain in the EU, powering together into the 21st century, you can forget about the 48/52 and think more along the lines of 38/62 imo.
We need coherent social policy in Scotland. SNP says you can vote and change your legal sex at 16, but you should not go to jail under 25 - even for rape - as your brain is not fully developed. Irrational policies rooted in cynical political expediency 🤦🏼♀️
I saw @kjh moaning about my plan - potentially - to move to Spain to take advantage of their digital nomad visa. Apparently this is hypocrisy as I voted for Leave. You what??
The scheme, as I understand it, is specifically for non EU citizens. So it’s actually a benefit of Brexit. Couldn’t do it if we were still inside the EU
But Spain is still inside the EU!
But if the UK was still in the EU I would still be an EU citizen so I could not take advantage of the scheme
However. The irony of you dragging us out of the EU then upping sticks to emigrate to an EU country doesn't seem to have registered.
“It is a magnificent irony of Brexit that probably its biggest most tangible benefit yet is that millions of us can now leave the UK….”
I posted that 5 minutes before your comment. Feel free to RESILE
That VD is wrong. It The set of non-Kingstonian inventors of the Venn Diagram is a null set. The pic should look like an egg cut in half. But in fairness it is not by the Maths Dept but, presumabluy, the marketing folkses.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
The problem went deeper than just the campaign. British European policy since Maastricht was focused on securing opt-outs and insulating ourselves from things we regarded as misguided, most notably the single currency. It's very difficult to run a positive campaign for a negative deal.
And yet they did. The incredibly positive core message of better in than out.
That's a lesser of two evils argument. Here's a quote from Cameron's final big speech before the referendum. It's hardly an inspiring rallying cry in favour of integration:
"I know Europe isn’t perfect. Believe me, I understand and I see those frustrations.
"I feel them myself.
"That’s why we negotiated and enhanced our special status.
That VD is wrong. It The set of non-Kingstonian inventors of the Venn Diagram is a null set. The pic should look like an egg cut in half. But in fairness it is not by the Maths Dept but, presumabluy, the marketing folkses.
A pedant speaks - actually the diagram is correct. A Venn diagram should always show areas of non overlap even if those are an empty set.
It’s gonna be fucking hilarious when we can sit in Malaga and laugh at the Remoaner expats who got EU residency and are paying 40% tax while us Leavers are also living in Spain and paying 15%
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
My favourite was Stuart Rose, saying that a vote to leave will lead to unskilled wages going up.
Although that one did turn out to be true.
Stuart Rose was bound and gagged in a basement for the rest of the campaign.
Alongside Cameron's "Renegotiation". Whose name was never to be uttered.
Remain really was a Clown Convention.
Cameron didn't get all of what he wanted but he got quite a lot. But it didn't matter because anything he did get would have been dismissed anyway.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
My favourite was Stuart Rose, saying that a vote to leave will lead to unskilled wages going up.
Although that one did turn out to be true.
The problem is that each side had killer points, for and against, and each side was in denial on key issues too; because neither being in the EU nor exiting it was entirely rational to enough people.
If you were UK sovereign constitutionalist and didn't want an EU with ever growing state like powers you could not stay, and if you wanted the best option for trade and commerce you could not leave.
If you wanted the UK to have both, the rational choices were: Remain, and do your best to limit the ambition (good luck); or Brexit and hope for EFTA/EEA (good luck).
And good luck to SKS who, I am sure, knows all this.
One of the greats of species protection is a Kiwi called Rodney Russ. He saved a whole bunch of species in New Zealand from almost certain extinction. I went on a trip to the sub-Antarctic Islands with him.
However, there was one species of NZ wildlife that had always evaded him - the Magenta Petrel. Possibly down to just 100 pairs, nobody really knows. Bloody rare whatever. It nests under the roots of tree ferns in the Chatham Islands. It comes in after dark, departs before light. It had never been photographed in flight. The only known examples for many decades were skins in the collection at Tring. Somebody had a close look at them and thought "These are different..." Knowing nothing about them, they were named after the research ship that collected them - the SS Magenta.
So keen was he to see one that he had manned a searchlight on Chatham to spot them coming in. Without success.
With the Night Parrot of Australia, it could lay claim to be the most elusive bird in the world.
Anyway, on my sub-Antarctic trip, we had two days of fog. Really pissed off the whale-watchers, as it should have been the best of the trip. I was chatting on the bow with a guy (now sadly deceased) who had probably seen more species of whales and dolphins than anyone on the planet. He was so pissed off at the lost opportunity that he had taken up smoking. As he lit up, I noticed a bird coming across the bows from our right. "Get onto this - we haven't seen this before!" I shouted to him. We watched for 30 seconds as the bird drifted in front of us and back into the gloom.
We looked at each other. Then had to work out which of us was going to tell Rodney Russ we had just jammed in on the fabled Magenta Petrel.
He took in good spirit, before probably slinking away for a good cry.
Postscript: The following year, Rodney is running the same trip. At exactly the co-ordinates we had given him, and on a day with beautiful cloudless sky, one flew round the boat for 45 minutes. They managed to get some excellent shots of a Magenta Petrel - the first ever of it in flight.
And then he had the set of all the New Zealand wildlife. I like to think I played a part in that.
That VD is wrong. It The set of non-Kingstonian inventors of the Venn Diagram is a null set. The pic should look like an egg cut in half. But in fairness it is not by the Maths Dept but, presumabluy, the marketing folkses.
A pedant speaks - actually the diagram is correct. A Venn diagram should always show areas of non overlap even if those are an empty set.
Oh, really? Thanks, didn't know that. Wasn't taught at my school ...
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
The problem went deeper than just the campaign. British European policy since Maastricht was focused on securing opt-outs and insulating ourselves from things we regarded as misguided, most notably the single currency. It's very difficult to run a positive campaign for a negative deal.
And yet they did. The incredibly positive core message of better in than out.
That's a lesser of two evils argument. Here's a quote from Cameron's final big speech before the referendum. It's hardly an inspiring rallying cry in favour of integration:
"I know Europe isn’t perfect. Believe me, I understand and I see those frustrations.
"I feel them myself.
"That’s why we negotiated and enhanced our special status.
"Out of the Euro.
"Keeping our borders.
"Not involved in ever-closer union."
Yeah, that's a good example. Not only not selling the positives of the political project, of which the euro and ever closer union were (and are) probably the two most-recognised elements - but disingenuously implying it wasn't a thing we needed to consider.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
Well the youth of the nation voted Remain. But on the general 'positive v negative' point: (i) EU membership benefits us. We'll be worse off without it. (ii) EU membership benefits us. We are better off keeping it. These are exactly the same message. Neither is positive, neither is negative, both are the plain and simple truth.
Mathematically, they are equivalent. Emotionally, they are very different. Perhaps the reason that you don't see the difference is that you believed from the outset that they are unquestionable truth. To people who were trying to decide how to vote, they come across as very different messages.
Oh dear. It's negative progress! You had evolved to (and been congratulated through gritted teeth by me on) and I quote -
'I didn't say they "missed a trick", that's a complete invention on your part. The conclusion is that the Remain campaign used the most persuasive arguments they had available, which were all negative arguments.'
Are we now returning to saying Remain did indeed miss a trick by not sounding sufficiently positive? - In which case we're back with you needing to supply an example of what you mean.
No way out here, Driver, I'm afraid. Only yourself to blame.
One of the greats of species protection is a Kiwi called Rodney Russ. He saved a whole bunch of species in New Zealand from almost certain extinction. I went on a trip to the sub-Antarctic Islands with him.
However, there was one species of NZ wildlife that had always evaded him - the Magenta Petrel. Possibly down to just 100 pairs, nobody really knows. Bloody rare whatever. It nests under the roots of tree ferns in the Chatham Islands. It comes in after dark, departs before light. It had never been photographed in flight. The only known examples for many decades were skins in the collection at Tring. Somebody had a close look at them and thought "These are different..." Knowing nothing about them, they were named after the research ship that collected them - the SS Magenta.
So keen was he to see one that he had manned a searchlight on Chatham to spot them coming in. Without success.
With the Night Parrot of Australia, it could lay claim to be the most elusive bird in the world.
Anyway, on my sub-Antarctic trip, we had two days of fog. Really pissed off the whale-watchers, as it should have been the best of the trip. I was chatting on the bow with a guy (now sadly deceased) who had probably seen more species of whales and dolphins than anyone on the planet. He was so pissed off at the lost opportunity that he had taken up smoking. As he lit up, I noticed a bird coming across the bows from our right. "Get onto this - we haven't seen this before!" I shouted to him. We watched for 30 seconds as the bird drifted in front of us and back into the gloom.
We looked at each other. Then had to work out which of us was going to tell Rodney Russ we had just jammed in on the fabled Magenta Petrel.
He took in good spirit, before probably slinking away for a good cry.
Postscript: The following year, Rodney is running the same trip. At exactly the co-ordinates we had given him, and on a day with beautiful cloudless sky, one flew round the boat for 45 minutes. They managed to get some excellent shots of a Magenta Petrel - the first ever of it in flight.
And then he had the set of all the New Zealand wildlife. I like to think I played a part in that.
It's arguable... "...not an easy history to trace, but it is certain that the diagrams that are popularly associated with Venn, in fact, originated much earlier. They are rightly associated with Venn, however, because he comprehensively surveyed and formalized their usage, and was the first to generalize them".
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
The problem went deeper than just the campaign. British European policy since Maastricht was focused on securing opt-outs and insulating ourselves from things we regarded as misguided, most notably the single currency. It's very difficult to run a positive campaign for a negative deal.
And yet they did. The incredibly positive core message of better in than out.
That's a lesser of two evils argument. Here's a quote from Cameron's final big speech before the referendum. It's hardly an inspiring rallying cry in favour of integration:
"I know Europe isn’t perfect. Believe me, I understand and I see those frustrations.
"I feel them myself.
"That’s why we negotiated and enhanced our special status.
"Out of the Euro.
"Keeping our borders.
"Not involved in ever-closer union."
A derogation from FoM would have got Remain to win, and would have involved less compromise from the EU than they have done over NI.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
For the most part Remainer lies turned out to be accurate predictions.
Not all, by a long shot. Immediate recession? Immediate budget? Huge surge in unemployment?
There were loads of Remainer threats that did not come true
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
My favourite was Stuart Rose, saying that a vote to leave will lead to unskilled wages going up.
Although that one did turn out to be true.
The problem is that each side had killer points, for and against, and each side was in denial on key issues too; because neither being in the EU nor exiting it was entirely rational to enough people.
If you were UK sovereign constitutionalist and didn't want an EU with ever growing state like powers you could not stay, and if you wanted the best option for trade and commerce you could not leave.
If you wanted the UK to have both, the rational choices were: Remain, and do your best to limit the ambition (good luck); or Brexit and hope for EFTA/EEA (good luck).
And good luck to SKS who, I am sure, knows all this.
That's a good analysis of how I was thinking in the last few days before the referendum. I thought the latter was more likely; I definitely expected that a narrow Leave win would see Remainers argue for EFTA/EEA rather than trying to overturn the result. That was obviously naive.
Sir Keir, of course, was the architect of Labour's overturn-the-result strategy in the 2017 parliament.
That VD is wrong. It The set of non-Kingstonian inventors of the Venn Diagram is a null set. The pic should look like an egg cut in half. But in fairness it is not by the Maths Dept but, presumabluy, the marketing folkses.
Yes, the first set should be labelled 'People born in Hull', and the second should be labelled 'people who invented types of diagram'. And the labels should be labels, not members of the sets.
Honestly, they teach this stuff to primary school children. And those who fail to understand it get jobs in marketing
I saw @kjh moaning about my plan - potentially - to move to Spain to take advantage of their digital nomad visa. Apparently this is hypocrisy as I voted for Leave. You what??
The scheme, as I understand it, is specifically for non EU citizens. So it’s actually a benefit of Brexit. Couldn’t do it if we were still inside the EU
But Spain is still inside the EU!
But if the UK was still in the EU I would still be an EU citizen so I could not take advantage of the scheme
However. The irony of you dragging us out of the EU then upping sticks to emigrate to an EU country doesn't seem to have registered.
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
I think that the Remain campaign was rather negative - the impression was basically don't vote leave because if you do we will be worse off. Now that may well be true (seems to be) but it was not a positive message, Perhaps focussing on opportunities for the youth of the nation to work and study abroad?
The issue was that both side told lies (or possibly said what they believed to be true). I think many leavers believed that a free trade agreement with the EU was the same as being in the single market, and its now abundantly clear that that is not the case.
Well the youth of the nation voted Remain. But on the general 'positive v negative' point: (i) EU membership benefits us. We'll be worse off without it. (ii) EU membership benefits us. We are better off keeping it. These are exactly the same message. Neither is positive, neither is negative, both are the plain and simple truth.
Mathematically, they are equivalent. Emotionally, they are very different. Perhaps the reason that you don't see the difference is that you believed from the outset that they are unquestionable truth. To people who were trying to decide how to vote, they come across as very different messages.
Oh dear. It's negative progress! You had evolved to (and been congratulated through gritted teeth by me on) and I quote -
'I didn't say they "missed a trick", that's a complete invention on your part. The conclusion is that the Remain campaign used the most persuasive arguments they had available, which were all negative arguments.'
Are we now returning to saying Remain did indeed miss a trick by not sounding sufficiently positive? - In which case we're back with you needing to supply an example of what you mean.
No way out here, Driver, I'm afraid. Only yourself to blame.
I can't return to saying something I haven't previously said. And it's the logical conclusion of your arguments - not mine - that the Remain campaign used what you - not me - think were the most persuasive arguments they had available, which were all negative arguments.
If we’d known about this eventual upside to Brexit - after Brexit you can will be able to move freely to the EU, BUT PAY MUCH LESS TAX then Leave would have won 70/30
- firstly capacity: the EU for bullshit reasons have said that the UK can’t use the automated gates (unlike South Korea, Australia or the US for example). That massively reduces the available capacity - from 10-20 gates to, usually, 2-4 officers - The individual checks are marginally longer. The electronic check is the same as pre-Brexit but then the officer flips through every page of the passport and stamps. I’d guesstimate it’s about 30 seconds extra per passport - We share a queue with countries that are deemed high risk so their passport checks and officer discussions take longer
In the case of Dover it’s a combination of several factors: (i) holiday demand; (ii) bad weather delaying sailings; (iii) staff shortages/work to rule by French officers who are grumbling about pay & conditions; and (iv) the elongated time required - especially with coaches where school kids have to get off the coach to be checked rather than a single teacher being able to take the passports down as a single bundle.
So part of it is normal stuff, and part of it is the French being silly and petty. So it’s not Brexit per se, but…
As I see it, Brexit allows the French to be silly and petty, and the French have chosen to take that opportunity (they weren't forced to).
So people who are blaming Brexit for this are essentially saying that the French should be expected to be silly and petty, which is rather xenophobic.
It's not as if the French were slow to turn down an opportunity to be pains in the arse at borders when we were in the EU. Sure, it was more difficult. But the argument 'if only we would do everything the French want us to then we will be able to get through borders more quickly' seems to me to fall into a 'too high a price to pay' category.
Operation Stack has been extant since 1987 - so it’s not as if the French being French, hasn’t been happening every few months for decades!
Yes, stamping of passports takes a little extra time, but the major factors are the work-to-rule by the border staff, and the recent weather.
The thing is with nearly everything Brexit is that it is nearly always another issue, but Brexit tips it over the edge unnecessarily and then people say 'Ah but it isn't Brexit it is this'.
Yes there have been queues at ports before. I have been held up on the tunnel for hours twice before Brexit, so yes there will always be times when it falls apart because of something or other, but those times are made worse by Brexit and there will be times when before Brexit it was just coping and now it won't.
The same applies to the impact on businesses. The cry goes out that the company was probably going to collapse anyway, they were barely making any profit for this reason or that. But Brexit doesn't help if it tips them over the edge and of course this applies to the more successful companies as well. Yes they will carry on being profitable, but less so.
The exclamation that it is always another reason and not Brexit is often/usually not true, both contribute. If you eliminate Brexit, it might just be you get by regardless of the other disaster (weather, overbooking, working to rule, etc)
Of course there will be times that Brexit has nothing to do with it at all and Brexit gets blamed (that's life), but equally there are examples where Brexit is not just contributory but entirely the reason for a failure, so that cuts both ways.
Absolutely. And the other point to make is that unlike COVID and Ukraine, Brexit was entirely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It is the most egregious example of a government acting contrary to what was in the country’s best interests. The Tories should never be forgiven for it.
LOL if the majority in the country voted to leave who are you to tell them theyre wrong ?
The majority of the country now think they were wrong. Who are you to tell us that our opinions were set in stone back in 2016 ?
Oh really, are you that naive ?
The current polls simply reflect a long whine from remianers blaming everything they can think of on Brexit, often when it has nothing to do with it.
What is missing is the the long list of bad news from the EU which regularly occurred when we were in. We had a taste of that in the Covid fiasco when Van der Leyen demanded all our AZ jabs.
But currently were missing the £17 billion quid handed over in times of austerity, the keep Germany's lights on diktat on pool gas resources, the dont upset Putin schtick in Ukraine we would have been tied in with via EU foreign policies, lots more immigration, and all the daily low level bollocks which just pissed people off.
The news cycle to date has mostly been one way, the polls are simply reflecting that, throw in the reality of what we have missed out on and they wont be showing those results.
Well I can see your opinion is indeed set in stone.
'Long whine' is good. As though that would persuade anyone against their will.
My opinions not set in stone, there have been some uncomfortable adjustments as a result of Brexit but the country isnt falling apart because of it. Covid and Putin have had much bigger impacts.
And as for the whining, the vote was almost 7 years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than cling on to a non existent past, you and the League of European Empire Loyalists still have your chance to seek to rejoin Nirvana. Maybe you could advance some positive arguments next time,
How is "better off in than out" not a positive argument?
It would have been, if only the Remain campaign had bothered to make it.
We heard little else from them.
LOL. "Worse out than in", although mathematically equivalent to "better in than out", is very different emotionally. I seem to remember we've already had this discussion in recent days.
We have - and your 'point' hasn't got any better. It's inane. Staying in the EU was the status quo. Same old same old. You can't market this as the ticket to a thrilling new life.
"Vote Remain. Let's carry on as we are. It's gonna be a blast!"
C'mon.
What you can do is what was done - stress that leaving would make us poorer and weaker. Which has duly happened, hence the consensus it was a mistake.
The bit in bold says it all. The Remain campaign was negative and argued "worse out than in" not "better in than out" - if you admit as much, why are you disagreeing with me? We agree!
What would be better than trolling - which I have limited patience for these days as you know - is if you can provide a concrete example of a big positive uplifting argument for staying in the EU that the Remain campaign should have made but didn't.
Some actual examples of things that we benefited from by being in the EU. Not described as "we will/might lose this if we leave".
Such as? Come on let's have a sample 'campaigning sentence' ...
"Perhaps THE most excellent of the many excellent things about EU membership is ... Driver to complete"
Why are you asking me? I voted Leave not least because the Remain campaign didn't come up with any examples! Unless you're implying that there are no such examples?
A person who keeps claiming the Remain campaign missed a trick by not making positive arguments for EU membership really ought to be able to give at least one example of what they mean. If they can't one would have to conclude they are ... no, let's not pre-empt matters, let's not assume you can't do this until you've failed another couple of times.
The problem went deeper than just the campaign. British European policy since Maastricht was focused on securing opt-outs and insulating ourselves from things we regarded as misguided, most notably the single currency. It's very difficult to run a positive campaign for a negative deal.
And yet they did. The incredibly positive core message of better in than out.
That's a lesser of two evils argument. Here's a quote from Cameron's final big speech before the referendum. It's hardly an inspiring rallying cry in favour of integration:
"I know Europe isn’t perfect. Believe me, I understand and I see those frustrations.
"I feel them myself.
"That’s why we negotiated and enhanced our special status.
"Out of the Euro.
"Keeping our borders.
"Not involved in ever-closer union."
A derogation from FoM would have got Remain to win, and would have involved less compromise from the EU than they have done over NI.
Comments
How hard was that?
I think you’re giving Sunak too much credit.
Well done on your bet, but don’t give up your day job to trade forex!
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eurostar_spécial_Alpes-Paris_suite_COVID-19_le_16_mars_2020_en_Savoie.JPG
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eurostar_d'hiver_quittant_Albertville_(2018).JPG
If you want to go REALLY retro, ride the 1972-vintage Bakerloo line trains or the 1973-vintage Piccadilly line trains
Also habitat loss due to, er, too many deer. Naturally they are being released in a place where the deer are being controlled more aggressively. Possibly even Glen Feshie...
Beavers like to eat riverside trees - particularly poplars and willows. These have evolved to regenerate from the stumps. When humans do this it is called pollarding. This is not the same as the damage deer do by eating the saplings.
From a globally threatened species to a common sight in the UK after a big push that started 30 years ago
This was my favourite:
"Donald Tusk: Brexit could destroy Western political civilisation"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36515680
This was another failure of the Remain campaign. Insane rants like this made voters dismiss EVERY Remainer warning, when in fact some of them were perfectly valid, and have since been proven correct
Meanwhile, Ukraine's recovery of the lost territory and its accession to NATO is inevitable and then Belarus will be the next domino. And Putin brought it all on himself.
He sounds like the best gift to the united US-led west that Russia has ever produced.
Seriously - its a nice sight to see a kite flying on the way to work (as happened today).
I could go on, but we have left, we are not going back so we need to make the best of a poor hand.
I love the old Bakerloo line stock - pretty much the only train I remember from my childhood still in operation now that the HSTs are largely retired.
Took the polling scores, took an average over each week since the start of the year (no clever regressions, no weighting by size of poll, and if a poll was in the field for, say, four days split two days into each of two weeks, I simply had it in both weeks), and here we go:
Average scores a very boringly stable this year so far, but Tories have climbed a little over March and Labour have shifted down just a tad since their peak in late January.
(dashed lines are 2019, thick lines are this year).
We should probably bear in mind that Change UK came into existence in late Feb 2019 as well, which makes comparisons a bit more fraught.
Although that one did turn out to be true.
The @EHRC was asked by ministers whether the protected characteristic of sex in the 2010 Equality Act would benefit from clarification that it refers to biological sex.
It has written back to say yes it would have significant benefits & merits further consideration.
https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1643261167823880192?s=20
There was a pair here in the Flatlands that turned up in the late 1990s (this was kept secret, of course). There's a fair few now and there's also a reintroduction programme in Somerset so they aren't quite so hush hush these days. They also turned up in Norfolk naturally, too.
Alongside Cameron's "Renegotiation". Whose name was never to be uttered.
Remain really was a Clown Convention.
The issue we have is covid and Ukraine has dwarfed other effects. For the man in the street its easy to assume its all down to brexit, especially as a lot of Remainers keep banging that drum.
In reality some things have been contributed to by Brexit.
The core slogan, naah passed Driver by.
A line that wasn't used in a speech? Remembered like it was yesterday.
I just saw a queue at some traffic lights which was entirely quiet. All electric. Then some petrol driven lorry rocked up and the noise was startling
https://twitter.com/UniOfHull/status/981461657321865216
Not a great advert for the university!
In relation to the EU yes it had benefits but those benefits were very unequally spread. If you were a manager wanting to employ min wage workers, a middle class home owner wanting a cheap au pair or plumber then sure you got benefits.
For half the country though they couldn't afford a plumber even at the cheaper prices but they did get increased pressure on housing and local services and more competition for low end jobs. I guess they got the benefit of not spending so long in a queue on their once a year trip to spain.
Then again, advice from Baldric would probably have worked out longer term.
The comparison is worth looking at since both Hitler and Putin were riding high on series of lucky dice rolls. Then the gamblers streak ended...
...Highlighting the bloodshed in the Balkans and Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine, he will add: "Can we be so sure that peace and stability on our continent are assured beyond any shadow of doubt?..
The scheme, as I understand it, is specifically for non EU citizens. So it’s actually a benefit of Brexit. Couldn’t do it if we were still inside the EU
However, there was one species of NZ wildlife that had always evaded him - the Magenta Petrel. Possibly down to just 100 pairs, nobody really knows. Bloody rare whatever. It nests under the roots of tree ferns in the Chatham Islands. It comes in after dark, departs before light. It had never been photographed in flight. The only known examples for many decades were skins in the collection at Tring. Somebody had a close look at them and thought "These are different..." Knowing nothing about them, they were named after the research ship that collected them - the SS Magenta.
So keen was he to see one that he had manned a searchlight on Chatham to spot them coming in. Without success.
With the Night Parrot of Australia, it could lay claim to be the most elusive bird in the world.
Anyway, on my sub-Antarctic trip, we had two days of fog. Really pissed off the whale-watchers, as it should have been the best of the trip. I was chatting on the bow with a guy (now sadly deceased) who had probably seen more species of whales and dolphins than anyone on the planet. He was so pissed off at the lost opportunity that he had taken up smoking. As he lit up, I noticed a bird coming across the bows from our right. "Get onto this - we haven't seen this before!" I shouted to him. We watched for 30 seconds as the bird drifted in front of us and back into the gloom.
We looked at each other. Then had to work out which of us was going to tell Rodney Russ we had just jammed in on the fabled Magenta Petrel.
He took in good spirit, before probably slinking away for a good cry.
Postscript: The following year, Rodney is running the same trip. At exactly the co-ordinates we had given him, and on a day with beautiful cloudless sky, one flew round the boat for 45 minutes. They managed to get some excellent shots of a Magenta Petrel - the first ever of it in flight.
And then he had the set of all the New Zealand wildlife. I like to think I played a part in that.
https://twitter.com/DalgetySusan/status/1643193272083402755?s=20
Thanks, Brexit
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/04/what-mike-pence-cant-ignore-anymore-00090210
...Now, Trump’s valet wants to be president. Pence hasn’t announced his candidacy yet — that would be too assertive, too direct, too scrutable. Instead, he’s tracking the presidential campaign scent with visits to Iowa and New Hampshire, and his staff is complaining about the good press Nikki Haley’s campaign is getting. If he really covets more press, let’s give it to him.
And if he really wants to be president, let’s learn a little more about when he was one heartbeat from that office, and the ways he assisted and accommodated Trump.
Yet Pence won’t even cooperate smoothly with the special counsel seeking to investigate the effort to overturn the 2020 election; he’s forcing a judge to compel his testimony.
For the past 15 months, Pence has acted as if bound by some non-disparagement agreement from speaking his mind about the Trump presidency. In the interim, Trump has continued to blast Pence. In January 2022, he excoriated Pence for not overturning the election. In June 2022, he ripped Pence for not having “the courage to act.” In November 2022, when ABC News reporter Jon Karl asked Trump about the “Hang Mike Pence” chant, Trump defended the vitriol, saying, “It’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect.” As recently as three weeks ago, Trump was still targeting Pence, telling reporters, “In many ways you can blame him for Jan. 6.”..
...Pence’s passivity, which ignited the day he signed on as Trump’s running mate and ran full bore until the end of Trump administration, got another boost when the pair left office. As he gathers kindling for his own presidential run, Pence remains tethered to the Trump leash politically, unable to speak his own mind, moving toward 2024 with all the groveling and purpose you might expect from a sloth.
The irony of you dragging us out of the EU then upping sticks to emigrate to an EU country doesn't seem to have registered.
Actually, no. I'm not going to go there...
“It is a magnificent irony of Brexit that probably its biggest most tangible benefit yet is that millions of us can now leave the UK….”
I posted that 5 minutes before your comment. Feel free to RESILE
"I know Europe isn’t perfect. Believe me, I understand and I see those frustrations.
"I feel them myself.
"That’s why we negotiated and enhanced our special status.
"Out of the Euro.
"Keeping our borders.
"Not involved in ever-closer union."
If you were UK sovereign constitutionalist and didn't want an EU with ever growing state like powers you could not stay, and if you wanted the best option for trade and commerce you could not leave.
If you wanted the UK to have both, the rational choices were: Remain, and do your best to limit the ambition (good luck); or Brexit and hope for EFTA/EEA (good luck).
And good luck to SKS who, I am sure, knows all this.
Hope you don't mind me link to its wiki, as I'd never heard of it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magenta_petrel
Looking at the pictures, I can honestly and clearly say I've seen it. In fact, I've seen several today. Birds, they are.
What, you mean you classify narrower than that? Why?
'I didn't say they "missed a trick", that's a complete invention on your part. The conclusion is that the Remain campaign used the most persuasive arguments they had available, which were all negative arguments.'
Are we now returning to saying Remain did indeed miss a trick by not sounding sufficiently positive? - In which case we're back with you needing to supply an example of what you mean.
No way out here, Driver, I'm afraid. Only yourself to blame.
"...not an easy history to trace, but it is certain that the diagrams that are popularly associated with Venn, in fact, originated much earlier. They are rightly associated with Venn, however, because he comprehensively surveyed and formalized their usage, and was the first to generalize them".
Sir Keir, of course, was the architect of Labour's overturn-the-result strategy in the 2017 parliament.
I have discovered an Actual Brexit Benefit. And it’s the ability to move to a lovely sunny part of the EU and pay much less tax than EU citizens
CHORTLE
Honestly, they teach this stuff to primary school children. And those who fail to understand it get jobs in marketing
Subtle difference
Do try harder.
Brexiteers are still busy blaming Remainers for Brexit.
Shakes head and goes out again.
and Trumps heading to the court in an hour or so
yet Brexit beats all