- 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.
Eurostar only 2/3 full to accommodate for passport checks according to Simon Calder. Ferry companies told to reduce ticket sales to reduce passenger numbers to reduce passport check delays over the summer.
You won, we left, we have sucked it up and we are not going back. But please don't bullshit us by saying Brexit is great, all the bad stuff is courtesy of other circumstances and is definitely, categorically not because of Brexit.
What bad stuff? Thanks to our brilliant Brexit from the EU you can now go and live in the EU and pay barely any tax. And if you get bored of Spain you can go to Greece, Croatia or Portugal, which are offering similar visas
You absolute arse. What about everyone else who can't do that? You know 99.99% of the population. Talk about selfish.
- 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.
Um no. Driver is quite right. Either there were no positive arguments for EU membership or the Remain campaign failed to even attempt to make them. As such it is not for him to come up with those arguments - his position is not that there were none, he simply asks whether the reason they were not made was because the Remain campaign could find no convincing arguments.
Personally I think there were arguments - freedom of movement being the obvious one. But the Remain campaign really didn't try too hard to argue that case. Indeed their whole campaign was based on negatives.
In all honesty, I could have run a better argument for staying in the EU than the Remain campaign did.
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
You make it sound like a failure: this is an important filtering process that enables us to identify the future marketing managers early and ensure they learn appropriate skills.
You know, like how to get the bill in any restaurant, anywhere in the world.
Thats a developed skill. You can free load on the company, the financiers think theyve avoided paying but fail to understand the moneys all coming out of the same place.
- 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.
Eurostar only 2/3 full to accommodate for passport checks according to Simon Calder. Ferry companies told to reduce ticket sales to reduce passenger numbers to reduce passport check delays over the summer.
You won, we left, we have sucked it up and we are not going back. But please don't bullshit us by saying Brexit is great, all the bad stuff is courtesy of other circumstances and is definitely, categorically not because of Brexit.
What bad stuff? Thanks to our brilliant Brexit from the EU you can now go and live in the EU and pay barely any tax. And if you get bored of Spain you can go to Greece, Croatia or Portugal, which are offering similar visas
You absolute arse. What about everyone else who can't do that? You know 99.99% of the population. Talk about selfish.
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%
Apart from the large majority of those who voted for Brexit not being able to qualify for it, it sounds quite an attractive scheme.
The net effect for the rest of the UK will of course be negative, but I don't think you should let such a consideration bother you.
The same applied to all those Brits who utilised Freedom of Movement to go and live in, er, Spain and Portugal - taking their tax income with them, and making the UK poorer
And yet I don’t recall you railing against their selfishness back then. Odd
- 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.
Eurostar only 2/3 full to accommodate for passport checks according to Simon Calder. Ferry companies told to reduce ticket sales to reduce passenger numbers to reduce passport check delays over the summer.
You won, we left, we have sucked it up and we are not going back. But please don't bullshit us by saying Brexit is great, all the bad stuff is courtesy of other circumstances and is definitely, categorically not because of Brexit.
What bad stuff? Thanks to our brilliant Brexit from the EU you can now go and live in the EU and pay barely any tax. And if you get bored of Spain you can go to Greece, Croatia or Portugal, which are offering similar visas
You absolute arse. What about everyone else who can't do that? You know 99.99% of the population. Talk about selfish.
Sounds not unlike the 99.9% of the population to whom the theoretical freedom to work anywhere in Europe under EU law is entirely irrelevant.
If @Leon is in the 0.1% he could be a woman with a penis,
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%
Apart from the large majority of those who voted for Brexit not being able to qualify for it, it sounds quite an attractive scheme.
The net effect for the rest of the UK will of course be negative, but I don't think you should let such a consideration bother you.
The same applied to all those Brits who utilised Freedom of Movement to go and live in, er, Spain and Portugal - taking their tax income with them, and making the UK poorer
And yet I don’t recall you railing against their selfishness back then. Odd
This was back when The Guardian thought Brits in Spain were dirty chavs who spent all day eating chips and refusing to learn Spanish, rather than rakish sophisticates to be admired.
- 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.
Eurostar only 2/3 full to accommodate for passport checks according to Simon Calder. Ferry companies told to reduce ticket sales to reduce passenger numbers to reduce passport check delays over the summer.
You won, we left, we have sucked it up and we are not going back. But please don't bullshit us by saying Brexit is great, all the bad stuff is courtesy of other circumstances and is definitely, categorically not because of Brexit.
What bad stuff? Thanks to our brilliant Brexit from the EU you can now go and live in the EU and pay barely any tax. And if you get bored of Spain you can go to Greece, Croatia or Portugal, which are offering similar visas
You absolute arse. What about everyone else who can't do that? You know 99.99% of the population. Talk about selfish.
LEARN TO KNAP
Learn to post as Horse_B ?
If that was Leon, it was a fucking convincing CHB parody
- 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.
Um no. Driver is quite right. Either there were no positive arguments for EU membership or the Remain campaign failed to even attempt to make them. As such it is not for him to come up with those arguments - his position is not that there were none, he simply asks whether the reason they were not made was because the Remain campaign could find no convincing arguments.
Personally I think there were arguments - freedom of movement being the obvious one. But the Remain campaign really didn't try too hard to argue that case. Indeed their whole campaign was based on negatives.
In all honesty, I could have run a better argument for staying in the EU than the Remain campaign did.
Obama 'back of the queue' was an avoidable own goal
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.
A scale thing surely, c.85k red deer v. under 1k beavers? Besides, beavers are culled also.
It has also been well established that Beavers are a bonus to the environment by naturally restricting flow in streams and rivers which prevents flooding downstream. It is why we are spending lots of money to build artificial beaver ponds in streams and rivers upstream from housing developments.
Government officials have reportedly raised concerns about one of the leading bidders for Manchester United over a £1.4 million fine handed out to his Qatari bank in 2016 by a British financial watchdog for regulatory failings.
Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad bin al-Thani is the chairman of Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), which was fined by the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority for its UK operation failing “to meet some of the most basic regulatory standards”.
The financial newswire Bloomberg has reported that senior Whitehall officials have voiced some concerns and may ask the Premier League to look into the issue as part of its due diligence checks if the takeover goes ahead.
- 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.
Eurostar only 2/3 full to accommodate for passport checks according to Simon Calder. Ferry companies told to reduce ticket sales to reduce passenger numbers to reduce passport check delays over the summer.
You won, we left, we have sucked it up and we are not going back. But please don't bullshit us by saying Brexit is great, all the bad stuff is courtesy of other circumstances and is definitely, categorically not because of Brexit.
What bad stuff? Thanks to our brilliant Brexit from the EU you can now go and live in the EU and pay barely any tax. And if you get bored of Spain you can go to Greece, Croatia or Portugal, which are offering similar visas
You absolute arse. What about everyone else who can't do that? You know 99.99% of the population. Talk about selfish.
Aleksandar Mitrovic has been banned for eight matches for his shove on referee Chris Kavanagh, but could yet face further punishment after the Football Association said it intends to appeal against the sanction.
The Fulham striker put his hands on Kavanagh in his team’s FA Cup defeat at Manchester United last month, after team-mate Willian and head coach Marco Silva had been sent off.
Mitrovic has also been fined £75,000 and will miss Fulham’s next seven matches, as he has already served one match of his ban. The Serbian striker will therefore not be available until Fulham play Southampton on May 13.
Silva, meanwhile, has been handed a two-match touchline ban for his own behaviour at Old Trafford.
But both men could yet have their suspensions extended if the FA succeeds in their expected appeal against the two sanctions.
- 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.
Um no. Driver is quite right. Either there were no positive arguments for EU membership or the Remain campaign failed to even attempt to make them. As such it is not for him to come up with those arguments - his position is not that there were none, he simply asks whether the reason they were not made was because the Remain campaign could find no convincing arguments.
Personally I think there were arguments - freedom of movement being the obvious one. But the Remain campaign really didn't try too hard to argue that case. Indeed their whole campaign was based on negatives.
In all honesty, I could have run a better argument for staying in the EU than the Remain campaign did.
Obama 'back of the queue' was an avoidable own goal
Especially as an American would have said ‘back of the line’, so it was obviously written by a Brit.
- 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.
Um no. Driver is quite right. Either there were no positive arguments for EU membership or the Remain campaign failed to even attempt to make them. As such it is not for him to come up with those arguments - his position is not that there were none, he simply asks whether the reason they were not made was because the Remain campaign could find no convincing arguments.
Personally I think there were arguments - freedom of movement being the obvious one. But the Remain campaign really didn't try too hard to argue that case. Indeed their whole campaign was based on negatives.
In all honesty, I could have run a better argument for staying in the EU than the Remain campaign did.
Obama 'back of the queue' was an avoidable own goal
Especially as an American would have said ‘back of the line’, so it was obviously written by a Brit.
"It is an honour to welcome @jacindaardern to the @EarthshotPrize team. Her life-long commitment to supporting sustainable and environmental solutions, along with her experience as Prime Minister of New Zealand, will bring a rich infusion of new thinking to our mission."
Really driving certain elements even more insane on Twitter.
- 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.
Um no. Driver is quite right. Either there were no positive arguments for EU membership or the Remain campaign failed to even attempt to make them. As such it is not for him to come up with those arguments - his position is not that there were none, he simply asks whether the reason they were not made was because the Remain campaign could find no convincing arguments.
Personally I think there were arguments - freedom of movement being the obvious one. But the Remain campaign really didn't try too hard to argue that case. Indeed their whole campaign was based on negatives.
In all honesty, I could have run a better argument for staying in the EU than the Remain campaign did.
Obama 'back of the queue' was an avoidable own goal
Especially as an American would have said ‘back of the line’, so it was obviously written by a Brit.
Oh gods not that conspiracy theory again.
There's no evidence it's true, but it's perfectly plausible that the line was planted. Hardly a conspiracy.
"It is an honour to welcome @jacindaardern to the @EarthshotPrize team. Her life-long commitment to supporting sustainable and environmental solutions, along with her experience as Prime Minister of New Zealand, will bring a rich infusion of new thinking to our mission."
Really driving certain elements even more insane on Twitter.
Certain elements on twitter should just be muted at all times.
I don’t think the fine is proportionate to the offence.
£1639 for going 68mph on a motorway?
These temporary speed limits often have no obvious justification. AIUI, they’re usually used for traffic jam management, further up the motorway. It’s also cognitively quite difficult when the speed limit goes from 70 to 40 to 60 to 40 to 70 over just a few minutes driving and can be quite distracting, having to pay constant attention to the overhead speed limits, rather than the actual road/traffic etc.
Imo, in these kind of situations there should be an additional legal test of: did the driver endanger other people’s safety?
Token fines for a technical breach, serious fines for driving recklessly. It’s not clear from that write up that the decision was anything other than “speed limit was x, you were caught driving at y, fine is therefore z”
I doubt he’ll get much sympathy from anyone, though!
The Remain campaign was poor, but the number one main reason we left is 30 years of Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre telling us how shit the EEC/EC/EU/2nd Coming of Nazi Germany (delete as appropriate) was, with some Austerity thrown in.
You somehow overlooked 40 years of deprivation of democracy, by Europhiles determiend they knew better than pesky voters...
Deprivation of democracy? We had a referendum to go in (or to be exact stay in). Were we supposed to have another referendum every five years or something?
- 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.
Um no. Driver is quite right. Either there were no positive arguments for EU membership or the Remain campaign failed to even attempt to make them. As such it is not for him to come up with those arguments - his position is not that there were none, he simply asks whether the reason they were not made was because the Remain campaign could find no convincing arguments.
Personally I think there were arguments - freedom of movement being the obvious one. But the Remain campaign really didn't try too hard to argue that case. Indeed their whole campaign was based on negatives.
In all honesty, I could have run a better argument for staying in the EU than the Remain campaign did.
Obama 'back of the queue' was an avoidable own goal
Especially as an American would have said ‘back of the line’, so it was obviously written by a Brit.
Oh gods not that conspiracy theory again.
That’s a conspiracy theory? Staff of two leaders at a summit would almost always run their speeches past each other, purely to avoid any diplomatic faux pas - like words that don’t quite translate.
Try it once, anyway. TBF Mrs C makes our own from potato and leek soup and slings in some undyed smoked haddock near the end (and/or prawns). But she buys the tins as a small treat for her mum who can't get them locally.
The digital nomad visa in Portugal is, like the Spanish one, ONLY open to non EU nationals
I guess this must be an issue with EU law preventing tax competition between member states? Or something? IANAL
Which means it’s probably the same in Greece and Croatia
This is a genuine tangible Brexit benefit for Brits who are able to work and live remotely. We have found one!
Of course it was unforeseeable - but that’s the nature of Brexit. It was a huge and revolutionary change, entirely unique, and you can never predict consequences years down the line, with things like that. It’s a bit like having a baby
So it allows the citizen of nowhere metropolitan elite to ponce off the working class in both UK and Spain? Sure its a win for the citizen of nowhere metropolitian elite like yourself, but not quite sure that was the intent of the Brexit vote.
- 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.
Um no. Driver is quite right. Either there were no positive arguments for EU membership or the Remain campaign failed to even attempt to make them. As such it is not for him to come up with those arguments - his position is not that there were none, he simply asks whether the reason they were not made was because the Remain campaign could find no convincing arguments.
Personally I think there were arguments - freedom of movement being the obvious one. But the Remain campaign really didn't try too hard to argue that case. Indeed their whole campaign was based on negatives.
In all honesty, I could have run a better argument for staying in the EU than the Remain campaign did.
Obama 'back of the queue' was an avoidable own goal
Especially as an American would have said ‘back of the line’, so it was obviously written by a Brit.
I don’t think the fine is proportionate to the offence.
£1639 for going 68mph on a motorway?
These temporary speed limits often have no obvious justification. AIUI, they’re usually used for traffic jam management, further up the motorway.
Imo, in these kind of situations there should be an additional legal test of: did the driver endanger other people’s safety?
Token fines for a technical breach, serious fines for driving recklessly. It’s not clear from that write up that the decision was anything other than “speed limit was x, you were caught driving at y, fine is therefore z”
I doubt he’ll get much sympathy from anyone, though!
Roughly one week’s income. That guideline hasn’t changed since I got done for speeding 20 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?
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.
Eurostar only 2/3 full to accommodate for passport checks according to Simon Calder. Ferry companies told to reduce ticket sales to reduce passenger numbers to reduce passport check delays over the summer.
You won, we left, we have sucked it up and we are not going back. But please don't bullshit us by saying Brexit is great, all the bad stuff is courtesy of other circumstances and is definitely, categorically not because of Brexit.
What bad stuff? Thanks to our brilliant Brexit from the EU you can now go and live in the EU and pay barely any tax. And if you get bored of Spain you can go to Greece, Croatia or Portugal, which are offering similar visas
You absolute arse. What about everyone else who can't do that? You know 99.99% of the population. Talk about selfish.
Sounds not unlike the 99.9% of the population to whom the theoretical freedom to work anywhere in Europe under EU law is entirely irrelevant.
If @Leon is in the 0.1% he could be a woman with a penis,
Yesterday he was telling us that he planned to be great for the third and final act of his life.
Government officials have reportedly raised concerns about one of the leading bidders for Manchester United over a £1.4 million fine handed out to his Qatari bank in 2016 by a British financial watchdog for regulatory failings.
Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad bin al-Thani is the chairman of Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), which was fined by the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority for its UK operation failing “to meet some of the most basic regulatory standards”.
The financial newswire Bloomberg has reported that senior Whitehall officials have voiced some concerns and may ask the Premier League to look into the issue as part of its due diligence checks if the takeover goes ahead.
I assume the "it only takes two seconds" lie is aimed at the angry people who don't travel abroad but want to stop the rest of us doing so.
Anyone with eyes and a brain knows it takes more than 2 seconds, as it too more than 2 seconds when you hit their border. Yet the right keep saying this guff.
They won't persuade people who are alive. So it must be reassurance lies for the elderly and angry ro protect their prescious Brexit from reality.
67 million people travelled to EU countries from the UK in 2021
If even a tenth of them were as pissed off as those trying to get into Nice in March when there was one person doing UK passports then come the next election Sunak and his bunch of 300 shits will be out on their ears.
I can only hope Starmer's silence is based on the George Carmen technique of lulling them into a false sense of well being before blasting them with all you've got.
67 million people didn’t travel from the UK to 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.
Um no. Driver is quite right. Either there were no positive arguments for EU membership or the Remain campaign failed to even attempt to make them. As such it is not for him to come up with those arguments - his position is not that there were none, he simply asks whether the reason they were not made was because the Remain campaign could find no convincing arguments.
Personally I think there were arguments - freedom of movement being the obvious one. But the Remain campaign really didn't try too hard to argue that case. Indeed their whole campaign was based on negatives.
In all honesty, I could have run a better argument for staying in the EU than the Remain campaign did.
You could have, Richard, yes - a really positive one about how great freedom of movement was and how much richer we were because of the single market, how the EU is civilised peace and brotherhood incarnate, an undertaking we should be proud to be a part of, say all of this again and again and stay clear of any 'negativity' about leaving making us poorer, just don't mention any party pooper things like that, keep it all very very upbeat and elevated, I can actually picture this as I type and it feels good. I can also picture the result. Leave wins by 15 pts.
- 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."
Nonsense. It's a 'best of both worlds' argument. The pros without the cons. You know as well as I do there were big negative net votes to be had in arguing the merits of European political and monetary union to the great British public. So, you know, don't. It'd be idiotic - and also misleading because this vision was not the plan - so take a pass on that. Instead put the pragmatic true and POSITIVE case of better off in than out. Which was done. Utter tosh this stuff about the Remain campaign not being boosterish enough. In fact I sense it's Leaver gaslighting - and where it isn't it's genuine stupidity - so let's see if I have the discipline to make this my last post on the matter for at least a week.
If you're going to post such nonsense as the bits in bold, best that it is.
Whilst you and I probably share some centre-right views on politics, I think it is a bit rich for anyone who still believes in the fairytale of Brexit to be dancing on the pinhead about how well or badly either side positioned their bullshit in 2016. It iss a bit silly seeing as anyone but a cretin can see that Brexit has been an absolute pointless waste of time that has not benefitted one single British person. Equally many of us have to accept that Brexit (pointless though it was) has happened and we have to move on.
That said I will still laugh at anyone who still believes in it though. Sorry!
You have been shafted by brexit.....really don't care just like you didn't care about the millions that we negatively affected by us being in the EU. Frankly we don't give a shit about you and you taught us that by not giving a shit about us.
- 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.
Yes the 'us' there doesn't mean every single citizen. But on the whole, on a 'greatest good for the greatest number' type of metric, EU membership was an economic and cultural plus for the UK. This is pretty much accepted, I think. There are some intelligent, well informed people who argue otherwise but not very many.
The us wasn't the majority of the country though, those that benefitted we the top 50% not the bottom. The people who won't find themselves much poorer and can still manage in other words. People like you in fact
I assume the "it only takes two seconds" lie is aimed at the angry people who don't travel abroad but want to stop the rest of us doing so.
Anyone with eyes and a brain knows it takes more than 2 seconds, as it too more than 2 seconds when you hit their border. Yet the right keep saying this guff.
They won't persuade people who are alive. So it must be reassurance lies for the elderly and angry ro protect their prescious Brexit from reality.
67 million people travelled to EU countries from the UK in 2021
If even a tenth of them were as pissed off as those trying to get into Nice in March when there was one person doing UK passports then come the next election Sunak and his bunch of 300 shits will be out on their ears.
I can only hope Starmer's silence is based on the George Carmen technique of lulling them into a false sense of well being before blasting them with all you've got.
67 million people didn’t travel from the UK to 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.
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.
Genuinely, do you think this has changed in the slightest since Brexit?
Except maybe more so, as immigration has increased?
Difference now is those immigrating can only do so for jobs paying average wage or higher.....people like hospitality staff that were basically nailed to min wage before the cessation of FoM are at least getting payrise.
In addition higher earners being the immigrants now means they dont all gravitate to the cheaper rental areas so less stress on services as they are more evenly distributed
Comments
Personally I think there were arguments - freedom of movement being the obvious one. But the Remain campaign really didn't try too hard to argue that case. Indeed their whole campaign was based on negatives.
In all honesty, I could have run a better argument for staying in the EU than the Remain campaign did.
you pay a premium so a bunch of pissheads can lie to you and then celebrate down the pub,
Add a drop of good olive oil or a grating of parmesan or fresh ground pepper or chilli flakes or some combination thereof.
And yet I don’t recall you railing against their selfishness back then. Odd
Government officials have reportedly raised concerns about one of the leading bidders for Manchester United over a £1.4 million fine handed out to his Qatari bank in 2016 by a British financial watchdog for regulatory failings.
Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad bin al-Thani is the chairman of Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), which was fined by the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority for its UK operation failing “to meet some of the most basic regulatory standards”.
The financial newswire Bloomberg has reported that senior Whitehall officials have voiced some concerns and may ask the Premier League to look into the issue as part of its due diligence checks if the takeover goes ahead.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/government-concern-at-1-4m-fine-to-bank-chaired-by-manchester-united-s-qatari-bidder-7zr5mfb0j
Aleksandar Mitrovic has been banned for eight matches for his shove on referee Chris Kavanagh, but could yet face further punishment after the Football Association said it intends to appeal against the sanction.
The Fulham striker put his hands on Kavanagh in his team’s FA Cup defeat at Manchester United last month, after team-mate Willian and head coach Marco Silva had been sent off.
Mitrovic has also been fined £75,000 and will miss Fulham’s next seven matches, as he has already served one match of his ban. The Serbian striker will therefore not be available until Fulham play Southampton on May 13.
Silva, meanwhile, has been handed a two-match touchline ban for his own behaviour at Old Trafford.
But both men could yet have their suspensions extended if the FA succeeds in their expected appeal against the two sanctions.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2023/04/04/fulhams-aleksandar-mitrovic-banned-eight-matches-referee/
But throw in a only a modest amount of tactical voting, with 1/3 of LDs having voted tactically, and you get SNP 23, Lab 23, Con 6, LD 5.
"It is an honour to welcome @jacindaardern
to the @EarthshotPrize
team. Her life-long commitment to supporting sustainable and environmental solutions, along with her experience as Prime Minister of New Zealand, will bring a rich infusion of new thinking to our mission."
Really driving certain elements even more insane on Twitter.
I don’t think the fine is proportionate to the offence.
£1639 for going 68mph on a motorway?
These temporary speed limits often have no obvious justification. AIUI, they’re usually used for traffic jam management, further up the motorway. It’s also cognitively quite difficult when the speed limit goes from 70 to 40 to 60 to 40 to 70 over just a few minutes driving and can be quite distracting, having to pay constant attention to the overhead speed limits, rather than the actual road/traffic etc.
Imo, in these kind of situations there should be an additional legal test of: did the driver endanger other people’s safety?
Token fines for a technical breach, serious fines for driving recklessly. It’s not clear from that write up that the decision was anything other than “speed limit was x, you were caught driving at y, fine is therefore z”
I doubt he’ll get much sympathy from anyone, though!
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1643304829387694092
NEW THREAD
Apparently.
It's like meeting an old friend again.
But - and its a big but - letting us get sold to the Qataris is pretty bad. Not quite as bad as Newcastle sold to the head choppers. But not far off.
Brexit has worked just fine for me
In addition higher earners being the immigrants now means they dont all gravitate to the cheaper rental areas so less stress on services as they are more evenly distributed
Testing