The America of Hillary's "can't we just drone this guy". The America that brought us the festival of democracy that is the modern Middle East - courtesy of Shock and Awe. The America that invades whomsoever it likes. The only country to drop the H bomb.
[pedant mode on]
A (atomic) bomb, not H (hydrogen) bomb. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both fission devices, in which a fissile material (an element high up the periodic table with heavier atoms than normal) is forced rapidly into a critical mass, at which point it undergoes fission (its heavy atoms split releasing electrons) and a chain reaction (each electron splits more atoms, so even more electrons...) and a rapid outpouring of energy (the explosion)
A fusion bomb works the other way around: it forces light atoms to combine (fuse) rapidly. To do this you need a material with lighter atoms than normal, for example an isotope (variant) of hydrogen (hence "H bomb"). It is bloody difficult to make atoms fuse, so to set a fusion bomb off you have to wrap it in a fission bomb and set that off first
[/pedant mode off]
Pedant mode on. There is no such thing as a pure fusion weapon. There are fusion-boosted fission weapons, the H bomb, and staged thermonuclear weapons. Pedant mode off.
What are the differences? (I love the story of how the UK detonated the largest atom bomb ever in a bid to hoodwink the yanks into thinking we had the H bomb...)
A gun-design fission bomb fires some radioactive fuel (uranium or plutonium) into a ball of radioactive fuel to reach criticality (Hiroshima).
An implosion fission bomb uses a shell of explosives around the radioactive fuel to implode it in on itself to reach criticality (Nagasaki).
An H bomb does the same, but then uses that explosion to bring about fusion of deuterium and tritium (hence fusion-boosted fission and hence H bomb as deuterium and tritium are isomers of hydrogen).
Later designs have multiple stage explosions. I believe the US got up to a 3-stage explosion.
Pedant mode on. You can't create a gun-barrel triggered explosion using plutonium. That's why the implosion technique was invented for the Nagasaki bomb. Pedant mode off.
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
I didn't intend to suggest that we do, just wanted to illustrate how difficult it will be to get a meeting of minds between the Brexiteers and the EU. It will be a dialogue of the deaf.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeric post Brexit deal.
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
This was just part of Boris's persona - and I'm rather glad that the Cabinet feels able to make little jokes at each other's expense. It's rather healthy.
I doubt Mrs May is remotely bothered by the Lederhosen gag (her hyperactive 'protectors' may be another matter - tho with a bit of luck they'll have been told to chill).
Edit - imagine one of St Nicola's acolyte's trying it.....
I agree. @TSE does seem a little over-sensitive at the moment
He's just miffed that events keep getting in the way of the glorious moment when the AV thread is published.
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
I didn't intend to suggest that we do, just wanted to illustrate how difficult it will be to get a meeting of minds between the Brexiteers and the EU. It will be a dialogue of the deaf.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeri post Brexit deal.
I agree. Can anyone really see Fox and Bernier agreeing on anything? Even assuming, for the moment, that they are both within shouting distance of Planet Earth at the moment negotiations begin, which their past record suggests is a little unlikely, they will both just be out to do each other down.
I rate Davis more highly, but I suspect because he is more restrained and sensible he'll be frozen out.
LOL. No. America is flawed, but Russia is sadly another order of magnitude. Just look at a small area that is in the news at the moment, sports, and see how over 1,000 athletes benefited from doping in a state-run scheme.
Not that some US sports stars don't use drugs, but the scale of what happened in Russia was something else.
I'm also surprised that someone who lives and works in London for most of the time is so forgetful of Litvinenko. That messy, botched assassination could easily have caused more injury to innocents around, such as yourself.
Your love of hardmen dictators such as Assad or Putin is odd given your occupation. As a journalist and writer, if you lived in such a state you would be one of the first people to be faced with a choice: bow down and support the government uncritically, or end up with you (and possibly your family) in jail or worse.
So what would it be? Would you be a Solzhenitsyn and a Gerlich, or would you bow down to what you know are forces of evil?
Thanks Mr Jessop. I was trying to make the same point last night but Mrs Walker decided my PB allowance was over.
Of course the US is flawed. As is the UK. As is Norway, FFS. We have not built Jerusalem yet. But stating that there's no real difference between the US and Russia involves a wilful moral blindness.
Corbyn has spent a career saying the same thing. Hence his contortions in condemning the bombing of Aleppo. But Corbyn is far left. What's SeanT's excuse?
Ironically, the very real risk of Trump is that he actually does lessen the difference between the US and Russia. Despite the rather hopeful claims that he's a NY billionaire who will revert to acceptable - even Reagan style - type. This, by Putin expert Masha Gessen, is very good: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/12/13/putin-paradigm-how-trump-will-rule/
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
I didn't intend to suggest that we do, just wanted to illustrate how difficult it will be to get a meeting of minds between the Brexiteers and the EU. It will be a dialogue of the deaf.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeric post Brexit deal.
The argument is this is out best chance to get a good deal.
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
I didn't intend to suggest that we do, just wanted to illustrate how difficult it will be to get a meeting of minds between the Brexiteers and the EU. It will be a dialogue of the deaf.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeri post Brexit deal.
I agree. Can anyone really see Fox and Bernier agreeing on anything? Even assuming, for the moment, that they are both within shouting distance of Planet Earth at the moment negotiations begin, which their past record suggests is a little unlikely, they will both just be out to do each other down.
I rate Davis more highly, but I suspect because he is more restrained and sensible he'll be frozen out.
Team is Hammond and Davies with May in the background. Fox and Boris are focusing ex-EU.
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
The story is suspect. The Telegraph who have a diet of anti-EU stories to feed quoted one anonymous source who attended an exploratory put everything on the table meeting alongside Barnier. If four anonymous ambassadors, whose job it is to interpret these things,, misunderstood v Boris Johnson in a much more structured and formal meeting, why stood we believe this one? Even if Barnier did raise the topic as described, that doesn't mean the attendees will take the proposition forward. Finally the UK can always knock it back when it comes to negotiation in the unlikely event it does.
Having said all that, legal oversight of the treaty the UK does eventually sign with the EU is going to be a big and tricky issue. The EU reckon they messed up that aspect in the Swiss bilaterals.
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
I didn't intend to suggest that we do, just wanted to illustrate how difficult it will be to get a meeting of minds between the Brexiteers and the EU. It will be a dialogue of the deaf.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeri post Brexit deal.
I agree. Can anyone really see Fox and Bernier agreeing on anything? Even assuming, for the moment, that they are both within shouting distance of Planet Earth at the moment negotiations begin, which their past record suggests is a little unlikely, they will both just be out to do each other down.
I rate Davis more highly, but I suspect because he is more restrained and sensible he'll be frozen out.
Team is Hammond and Davies with May in the background. Fox and Boris are focusing ex-EU.
Didn't know that, that's something. But can you honestly see a lunatic like Bernier dealing with those two on a sensible grown-up level? He even makes Juncker look almost competent.
His appointment is the clearest sign imaginable that the EU doesn't actually believe negotiations will ever start.
The America of Hillary's "can't we just drone this guy". The America that brought us the festival of democracy that is the modern Middle East - courtesy of Shock and Awe. The America that invades whomsoever it likes. The only country to drop the H bomb.
[pedant mode on]
A (atomic) bomb, not H (hydrogen) bomb. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both fission devices, in which a fissile material (an element high up the periodic table with heavier atoms than normal) is forced rapidly into a critical mass, at which point it undergoes fission (its heavy atoms split releasing electrons) and a chain reaction (each electron splits more atoms, so even more electrons...) and a rapid outpouring of energy (the explosion)
A fusion bomb works the other way around: it forces light atoms to combine (fuse) rapidly. To do this you need a material with lighter atoms than normal, for example an isotope (variant) of hydrogen (hence "H bomb"). It is bloody difficult to make atoms fuse, so to set a fusion bomb off you have to wrap it in a fission bomb and set that off first
[/pedant mode off]
Pedant mode on. There is no such thing as a pure fusion weapon. There are fusion-boosted fission weapons, the H bomb, and staged thermonuclear weapons. Pedant mode off.
What are the differences? (I love the story of how the UK detonated the largest atom bomb ever in a bid to hoodwink the yanks into thinking we had the H bomb...)
A gun-design fission bomb fires some radioactive fuel (uranium or plutonium) into a ball of radioactive fuel to reach criticality (Hiroshima).
An implosion fission bomb uses a shell of explosives around the radioactive fuel to implode it in on itself to reach criticality (Nagasaki).
An H bomb does the same, but then uses that explosion to bring about fusion of deuterium and tritium (hence fusion-boosted fission and hence H bomb as deuterium and tritium are isomers of hydrogen).
Later designs have multiple stage explosions. I believe the US got up to a 3-stage explosion.
Pedant mode: isotopes not isomers.
Isomers are molecules of the same composition but different configuration, eg propanol (C3H8O) is a three carbon chain with an -OH group that can be either on the end carbon (1-propanol) or the middle carbon (2-propanol).
Isotopes are atoms of the same element (same number of protons in the nucleus) with different numbers of neutrons. Normal hydrogen has no neutrons; deuterium has one and tritium two. All have the single proton in the nucleus which is what makes hydrogen hydrogen.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
I didn't intend to suggest that we do, just wanted to illustrate how difficult it will be to get a meeting of minds between the Brexiteers and the EU. It will be a dialogue of the deaf.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeri post Brexit deal.
I agree. Can anyone really see Fox and Bernier agreeing on anything? Even assuming, for the moment, that they are both within shouting distance of Planet Earth at the moment negotiations begin, which their past record suggests is a little unlikely, they will both just be out to do each other down.
I rate Davis more highly, but I suspect because he is more restrained and sensible he'll be frozen out.
Team is Hammond and Davies with May in the background. Fox and Boris are focusing ex-EU.
That makes sense - and is encouraging. And we can all look forward to Mr Fox's cavalcade of Trade Deals......
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
I didn't intend to suggest that we do, just wanted to illustrate how difficult it will be to get a meeting of minds between the Brexiteers and the EU. It will be a dialogue of the deaf.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeri post Brexit deal.
I agree. Can anyone really see Fox and Bernier agreeing on anything? Even assuming, for the moment, that they are both within shouting distance of Planet Earth at the moment negotiations begin, which their past record suggests is a little unlikely, they will both just be out to do each other down.
I rate Davis more highly, but I suspect because he is more restrained and sensible he'll be frozen out.
Team is Hammond and Davies with May in the background. Fox and Boris are focusing ex-EU.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
I didn't intend to suggest that we do, just wanted to illustrate how difficult it will be to get a meeting of minds between the Brexiteers and the EU. It will be a dialogue of the deaf.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeri post Brexit deal.
I agree. Can anyone really see Fox and Bernier agreeing on anything? Even assuming, for the moment, that they are both within shouting distance of Planet Earth at the moment negotiations begin, which their past record suggests is a little unlikely, they will both just be out to do each other down.
I rate Davis more highly, but I suspect because he is more restrained and sensible he'll be frozen out.
Team is Hammond and Davies with May in the background. Fox and Boris are focusing ex-EU.
May is not in the background. She is front and centre, second guessing everything with a view to getting a good headline in the anti-EU press.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
I didn't intend to suggest that we do, just wanted to illustrate how difficult it will be to get a meeting of minds between the Brexiteers and the EU. It will be a dialogue of the deaf.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeri post Brexit deal.
I agree. Can anyone really see Fox and Bernier agreeing on anything? Even assuming, for the moment, that they are both within shouting distance of Planet Earth at the moment negotiations begin, which their past record suggests is a little unlikely, they will both just be out to do each other down.
I rate Davis more highly, but I suspect because he is more restrained and sensible he'll be frozen out.
Team is Hammond and Davies with May in the background. Fox and Boris are focusing ex-EU.
Didn't know that, that's something. But can you honestly see a lunatic like Bernier dealing with those two on a sensible grown-up level? He even makes Juncker look almost competent.
His appointment is the clearest sign imaginable that the EU doesn't actually believe negotiations will ever start.
More likely a mixture of incompetence and arrogance.
(said in my best Scooby Doo villain voice) "The EU would have been ok if it wasn't for you pesky Brits"
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
As far I can tell, a clean break is the EU objective. As they are in a stronger negotiating position than we are*, they'll probably get what they want. A clean break doesn't necessarily mean no agreement, not that they are out to "punish" us.
* Because the EU is in control of the process and the timescale;, they are bigger than us and therefore need the deal less than we do; because Theresa May is throwing away our best negotiating tactic - staying put until we get what we want - because she is scared of the Brexiteers.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
A lot of the rebels do look terrible, but I rather think the conclusion the Russians won't listen to us because of our disgraceful behaviour is not rooted in fact - when have they ever listened to us?
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
I like the idea of associate membership of the Eu with an EU passport. its a brill idea.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
I heard that Boris was fuming at Phil Hammond's gag at Boris at the start of the Autumn statement.
I'm assuming this is payback for this and Mrs May slapping him down for his comments over Saudi Arabia
Yeah, members of the Government should try to avoid making fun of each other on supposedly serious occasions.
While there are very few occasions that Britons find unsuitable for humour, most countries seperate it from serious business. Gallows humour is a great defuser of tension, but is very context specific. To the EU diplomats we appear to be a bunch of clowns, and who trusts a clown when negotiating?
They are currently looking like the clowns at the moment, what with their demands for extraterritorial jurisdiction for the ECJ.
I think that just demonstrates a level of delusion as great as the "Have cake and eat it" Brexiteers, and why we are heading to Hard Brexit.
Can you give us a philosophical argument as to why we should accept extraterritorial jurisdiction?
I didn't intend to suggest that we do, just wanted to illustrate how difficult it will be to get a meeting of minds between the Brexiteers and the EU. It will be a dialogue of the deaf.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeri post Brexit deal.
I agree. Can anyone really see Fox and Bernier agreeing on anything? Even assuming, for the moment, that they are both within shouting distance of Planet Earth at the moment negotiations begin, which their past record suggests is a little unlikely, they will both just be out to do each other down.
I rate Davis more highly, but I suspect because he is more restrained and sensible he'll be frozen out.
Team is Hammond and Davies with May in the background. Fox and Boris are focusing ex-EU.
May is not in the background. She is front and centre, second guessing everything with a view to getting a good headline in the anti-EU press.
Referring to the actual negotiations not the pre-politicking
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
I like the idea of associate membership of the Eu with an EU passport. its a brill idea.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
Anything short of a complete end to EU budget contributions, an end to membership of the single market and a points system for EU migrants will be labelled a betrayal by parts of the Tory right and UKIP. May will inevitably disappoint them in some respect which is why I expect UKIP to still be a force once the deal has been done.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The traditional way to prevent an election turning into a referendum on X is to offer that after the election, you will hold... a referendum on X...
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
I like the idea of associate membership of the Eu with an EU passport. its a brill idea.
The initial proposal sounded too good to be true for all sides, but apparently would be much harder to set up, and politically seems a hard sell. Partner rather than associate member would probably be a better name if it were a genuine option, anything with member in the name would be far too close to our existing status. Maybe a longer term option, as it seems unlikely the eu would favour a deal where nations could be associates and thus get most of what they want without full membership. It makes leaving look too attractive. And of course it would be much easier to argue the outcome doesn't match the referendum.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The traditional way to prevent an election turning into a referendum on X is to offer that after the election, you will hold... a referendum on X...
Or to change the question to a referendum on something else e.g. Do you trust May or Corbyn to protect Britain's interests in Brexit negotiations?
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
Anything short of a complete end to EU budget contributions, an end to membership of the single market and a points system for EU migrants will be labelled a betrayal by parts of the Tory right and UKIP. May will inevitably disappoint them in some respect which is why I expect UKIP to still be a force once the deal has been done.
Yes indeed, but the extent of the trouble will be interesting. If the a50 case is lost, with the fury that will provoke, I think it might strengthen the hand of the betrayal crowd, since calls that option a or b represents attempts to undercut the result will gain more credence.
I find it a little worrying that even if one is in the 'Brexit will inevitably be a success' crowd rather than 'it could be and we will make it one' crowd, that people get annoyed at being told it will be difficult work getting there.
One reason why the Euro deal will be crap for us. Davis et al haven't a clue.
Edit: I think Davis could be a case study for the Dunning-Krueger effect
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. (Wikipedia)
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
Most politicians would welcome the Conservatives' problems.
One reason why the Euro deal will be crap for us. Davis et al haven't a clue.
Edit: I think Davis could be a case study for the Dunning-Krueger effect
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. (Wikipedia)
A cabinet of incompetents, mediocrities and Philip Hammond.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
I like the idea of associate membership of the Eu with an EU passport. its a brill idea.
Why? I voted Remain but if we are going to Leave and make it work we need to do it totally and establish a full bilateral relationship with the EU in our own right rather than be part of some sub unit that has no influence on the rules or direction of the EU.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt seeowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome y will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
Anything short of a complete end to EU budget contributions, an end to membership of the single market and a points system for EU migrants will be labelled a betrayal by parts of the Tory right and UKIP. May will inevitably disappoint them in some respect which is why I expect UKIP to still be a force once the deal has been done.
Yes indeed, but the extent of the trouble will be interesting. If the a50 case is lost, with the fury that will provoke, I think it might strengthen the hand of the betrayal crowd, since calls that option a or b represents attempts to undercut the result will gain more credence.
The loss of the A50 case would be the beginnings of the betrayal movement but Parliament will still authorise Brexit, the betrayal calls will grow louder as the negotiations go on and hard Brexiteers and UKIP realise they will not get everything they want
Mr. HYUFD, yes, but it's also possible the centre could re-coalesce around a deal that involves departure but not on WTO terms. That would be electorally powerful, but May's task would be to keep herself alive (as Queen nearly sang) long enough for a General Election.
I'd almost forgotten about the Article 50 row. One side effect for me was to see how subjective the whole process is. It's an argument between different opinions.
I said that scientists can be subjective, but compared to lawyers we're bulwarks of objectivity. We set a high bar for verification, but in law it's who can shout most efficiently. And even worse, the prevailing opinion gets codified into law as a fact to be followed henceforth. Is it really a job for an adult?
A QC qualification is on a par with a boy scout's badge for fire-lighting - and at least we know the fire is lit.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt seeowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome y will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
Anything short of a complete end to EU budget contributions, an end to membership of the single market and a points system for EU migrants will be labelled a betrayal by parts of the Tory right and UKIP. May will inevitably disappoint them in some respect which is why I expect UKIP to still be a force once the deal has been done.
Yes indeed, but the extent of the trouble will be interesting. If the a50 case is lost, with the fury that will provoke, I think it might strengthen the hand of the betrayal crowd, since calls that option a or b represents attempts to undercut the result will gain more credence.
The loss of the A50 case would be the beginnings of the betrayal movement but Parliament will still authorise Brexit, the betrayal calls will grow louder as the negotiations go on and hard Brexiteers and UKIP realise they will not get everything they want
But they might, if the betrayal clamour is strong enough - it is the default option, hardest Brexit, the easiest, cleanest option. How well softer brexiter push the case will be critical.
For that matter, Blair was the worst. He actively frolicked into Brussels, threw away half the rebate, and got nothing in return.
Thatcher getting the rebate was probably the last good deal the UK got.
What about Major getting us an opt out of the Euro? Imagine if we were entwined in the Euro right now.
That was a negative, rather than a positive, achievement, but certainly one that he deserves credit for. Had we joined the Euro, I expect the boom in the run up to 2007 would have been greater, along with the subsequent crash. We'd have been like Ireland, but with an economy fifteen times bigger.
Last time this was done, I had some methodological points. In particular one respondent recorded >75% (clearly not a good faith answer) - and responses like that were included because the overall result was the mean, not the median.
The median was still twice the correct answer though.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt see that there is too much detail to go for a 'soft' Brexit? Isn't it clear that with the complexity and politicking, two years is nowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big political problem with a hard Brexit: it is likely to cause sustained economic hardship. That means lost votes. Squaring the Brexit circle economically and politically is the government's biggest challenge.
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome they were trying to negotiate without offending one wing of the party or the other (and electorate for that matter). So a post-Brexit election it will be and if that is on the back of a hard-Brexit then all the negative implications will be apparent to the country but not yet any of the positives. They will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
Not if it is positioned correctly. Money is fine.
It's the former bit that concerns me, as emotions run high and perception of betrayal us more critical than it occurring. But then I'd have been happy with a formal associate type status rather than full membership in the first place.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt seeowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome y will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
Anything short of a complete end to EU b done.
Yes indeed, but the extent of the trouble will be interesting. If the a50 case is lost, with the f
The loss of the A50 case would be the beginnings of the ing they want
But they might, if the betrayal clamour is strong enough - it is the default option, hardest Brexit, the easiest, cleanest option. How well softer brexiter push the case will be critical.
Yougov yesterday made clear less than a third of voters back hard Brexit, die-hard Remainers are about the same. Most voters favour a Canada style deal with a dash of EFTA and May can read the polls and that is exactly what she will do.
What a mess. I could have 'hacked' Podesta's emails, which were on an unsecured gmail account, which they got into by having him click on a link to a dodgy password reset site they'd set up.
Given the amount of money in the DNC, their IT team were shit at setting things up, and shit at handling the problems when they occurred. They should have know that a political party would be a target for hackers
And none of them are sticking unless you want to believe them regardless. The only significant electoral fraud has been conducted by Hillary fans as video'd by Veritas, there's no evidence of sophisticated Russian hacking - Podesta clicked on a phishing link and actually told thousands of people his user name and password in an email.
The CIA are in some peculiar proxy war with the FBI over this - and frankly I don't believe a word the CIA says about anything since their day job is lying.
In ten years, no one has credibly challenged the content of Wikileaks - they get rubbished, but never proven wrong. The Left loved them when they were embarrassing the Right - now it's the Russkies fault - pfft.
The US liberals need to get over themselves - they lost the contest using the rules that applied.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt seeowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome y will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
Anything short of a complete end to EU b done.
Yes indeed, but the extent of the trouble will be interesting. If the a50 case is lost, with the f
The loss of the A50 case would be the beginnings of the ing they want
But they might, if the betrayal clamour is strong enough - it is the default option, hardest Brexit, the easiest, cleanest option. How well softer brexiter push the case will be critical.
Yougov yesterday made clear less than a third of voters back hard Brexit, die-hard Remainers are about the same. Most voters favour a Canada style deal with a dash of EFTA and May can read the polls and that is exactly what she will do.
What a mess. I could have 'hacked' Podesta's emails, which were on an unsecured gmail account, which they got into by having him click on a link to a dodgy password reset site they'd set up.
Given the amount of money in the DNC, their IT team were shit at setting things up, and shit at handling the problems when they occurred. They should have know that a political party would be a target for hackers
No sympathy. At all.
It rather plays into the idea that the Democrats can't be trusted with emails, doesn't it?
Don't see it myself - not aware of a preponderance of embarrassing leaks from REMAIN over LEAVE - both were pretty good at shovelling ordure over themselves and each other.....
This is going to be the problem - while I've no doubt it is in Russia's strategic interest to undermine the EU, and BREXIT almost certainly helps that - I am not aware of any 'events' - like the Democrats leaked emails which occurred in the campaign to indicate that.....
What a mess. I could have 'hacked' Podesta's emails, which were on an unsecured gmail account, which they got into by having him click on a link to a dodgy password reset site they'd set up.
Given the amount of money in the DNC, their IT team were shit at setting things up, and shit at handling the problems when they occurred. They should have know that a political party would be a target for hackers
No sympathy. At all.
Another random person took control of Podesta's AppleMail and iPhone - stuck it all on Twitter before deleting the entire contents to annoy Podesta.
Anyone stupid enough to email their own password/username to a bunch of people is asking for it.
Assange indicated that the DNC staffer murdered in a random street shooting was the source. It was a very small nod, but seized on. I've no view here - but being a source, and then shortly later shot in the back in broad daylight doesn't help to defuse motives.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt seeowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome y will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. Howev single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
Anything short of a complete end to EU b done.
Yes indeed, but the extent of the trouble will be interesting. If the a50 case is lost, with the f
The loss of the A50 case would be the beginnings of the ing they want
But they might, if the betrayal clamour is strong enough - it is the default option, hardest Brexit, the easiest, cleanest option. How well softer brexiter push the case will be critical.
Yougov yesterday made clear less than a third of voters back hard Brexit, die-hard Remainers are about the same. Most voters favour a Canada style deal with a dash of EFTA and May can read the polls and that is exactly what she will do.
One person's soft brexit is another person's 'not really leaving at all'. So it comes down to how soft and hard can be presented, whatever people indicate their preference is now. And how May for one chooses to present the options as will depend on what she thinks she can get. If she cannot get the option that is most popular, she will need the next best thing and act as though what she is presenting is the same basic thing, and conversely that anything else is terrible.
Mr. kle4, the pro-Remain language of soft/hard may come back to bite them, as anything portrayed as 'soft' can be seen as weak, betrayal, leaving in name only etc.
Charles Delavan, a Clinton campaign aide, incorrectly legitimized a phishing email sent to the personal account of John D. Podesta, the campaign chairman.
Last time this was done, I had some methodological points. In particular one respondent recorded >75% (clearly not a good faith answer) - and responses like that were included because the overall result was the mean, not the median.
The median was still twice the correct answer though.
I agree, the Median is a better measure of such data.
Bear in mind the number of Muslims would probably halve if only observant Muslims were included too.
#Muslimslikeus was quite fascinating on BBC2, well worth catching.
Mr. kle4, the pro-Remain language of soft/hard may come back to bite them, as anything portrayed as 'soft' can be seen as weak, betrayal, leaving in name only etc.
Still holding out for either a minty Brexit or spherical Brexit.
Don't see it myself - not aware of a preponderance of embarrassing leaks from REMAIN over LEAVE - both were pretty good at shovelling ordure over themselves and each other.....
This is going to be the problem - while I've no doubt it is in Russia's strategic interest to undermine the EU, and BREXIT almost certainly helps that - I am not aware of any 'events' - like the Democrats leaked emails which occurred in the campaign to indicate that.....
Panama papers would be the only leak around about that time.
I suspect Bradshaws 'hackers' comment really means the excessive posting of dodgy news, Facebook twitter, etc. Sputnik opening an office in Edinburgh is an obvious example.
Nothing to get too paranoid about but just something to be aware of. Gary Kasparov has a good comment along the lines of the purpose of propaganda and infowars not being to make you believe but to dull your senses in being able to evaluate the truth.
What a mess. I could have 'hacked' Podesta's emails, which were on an unsecured gmail account, which they got into by having him click on a link to a dodgy password reset site they'd set up.
Given the amount of money in the DNC, their IT team were shit at setting things up, and shit at handling the problems when they occurred. They should have know that a political party would be a target for hackers
No sympathy. At all.
It rather plays into the idea that the Democrats can't be trusted with emails, doesn't it?
Somewhat.
Ironically, this is the sort of project for which they should have got a dedicated mail server, behind a VPN and firewall, with a white list of appproved and managed devices allowed to connect to it - exactly the same as any large company does!!!!!
Hopefully politicians and staffers of all stripes will learn from this.
1. Spend money on IT infrastructure and people, it can and will save your reputation. A mail server with support would have cost them no more than $100k a year, and the admin guy could probably have done a load more stuff with them at the same time - like secure their Dropbox or whatever, that they were lucky not to get hacked in the same way!
2. Assume that anything sent by email might end up as public domain. Have secret strategy discussions as actual meetings or video conferences, rather than by long email chains.
It seems obvious to me to go for a 'clean' (hard?) Brexit, and then negotiate deals from there, rather than trying to disentangle everything piecemeal. Can't the govt seeowhere near long enough? Give a man an impossible job, and when he fails, it is your fault, not his.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
There is a big
Quick deal with a quick general election is the answer, before any negative effect is felt. Worked for tsipras,
I think May wants to avoid an election that may become a de facto rerun of the referendum. She might end up having no choice, though.
The Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no likelihood of a pre-Brexit election because they would not be able to say what outcome y will lose that election as people will blame them for all the problems that will have become all to apparent by then.
However bad it gets I doubt May would ever lose an election to Corbyn. However as I have said before it is unlikely to be hard Brexit or soft Brexit but 'grey' Brexit ie free movement but only with a job offer and limited budget contributions to the EU for limited single market access
Any level of contribution will be labelled a betrayal. It will be interesting how the internal party ructions on that go, if that is the path.
Anything short of a complete end to EU b done.
Yes indeed, but the extent of the trouble will be interesting. If the a50 case is lost, with the f
The loss of the A50 case would be the beginnings of the ing they want
But they might, if the betrayal clamour is strong enough - it is the default option, hardest Brexit, the easiest, cleanest option. How well softer brexiter push the case will be critical.
Yougov yesterday made clear less than a third of voters back hard Brexit, die-hard Remainers are about the same. Most voters favour a Canada style deal with a dash of EFTA and May can read the polls and that is exactly what she will do.
"most" = about a third?
Compared to hard Brexit or a Norway EFTA option a Canada style deal was the only one which had a majority saying it would respect the referendum result and be a positive outcome for the UK
A Labour shadow minister has branded striking Southern Rail workers “admirable” amid the worst disruption to the train network in years.
While more than 300,000 commuters were left stranded at stations across London on Tuesday, the opposition’s transport secretary Andy McDonald pledged to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with union members.
Charles Delavan, a Clinton campaign aide, incorrectly legitimized a phishing email sent to the personal account of John D. Podesta, the campaign chairman.
Oh dear, oh dear...
I can forgive someone making a silly click-error - never done it myself that I know of, but it could happen.
Emailing your username and password to a bunch of people is cretinous. Who on PB would do this? It's worse than falling for a Nigerian Prince offering you £50m.
Comments
“Let’s be clear now. If you don’t shape the world, you will be shaped by it.”
He's not going away.
London overtaken in cocaine consumption by Antwerp of all places. The national shame. All you PBers in London need to get snorting soonest.
Totally agree with you here.
The focus of the negotiations should be on the mechanisms of Brexit, and how the disentangling occurs, rather than some pursuit of a chimeric post Brexit deal.
I rate Davis more highly, but I suspect because he is more restrained and sensible he'll be frozen out.
Of course the US is flawed. As is the UK. As is Norway, FFS. We have not built Jerusalem yet.
But stating that there's no real difference between the US and Russia involves a wilful moral blindness.
Corbyn has spent a career saying the same thing. Hence his contortions in condemning the bombing of Aleppo. But Corbyn is far left. What's SeanT's excuse?
Ironically, the very real risk of Trump is that he actually does lessen the difference between the US and Russia. Despite the rather hopeful claims that he's a NY billionaire who will revert to acceptable - even Reagan style - type. This, by Putin expert Masha Gessen, is very good:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/12/13/putin-paradigm-how-trump-will-rule/
Having said all that, legal oversight of the treaty the UK does eventually sign with the EU is going to be a big and tricky issue. The EU reckon they messed up that aspect in the Swiss bilaterals.
His appointment is the clearest sign imaginable that the EU doesn't actually believe negotiations will ever start.
Isomers are molecules of the same composition but different configuration, eg propanol (C3H8O) is a three carbon chain with an -OH group that can be either on the end carbon (1-propanol) or the middle carbon (2-propanol).
Isotopes are atoms of the same element (same number of protons in the nucleus) with different numbers of neutrons. Normal hydrogen has no neutrons; deuterium has one and tritium two. All have the single proton in the nucleus which is what makes hydrogen hydrogen.
With a starting point of a blank sheet, an amazing amount would be covered in two years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/27/who-is-michelbarnier-the-frenchman-in-charge-of-the-eus-brexit-n/
(said in my best Scooby Doo villain voice) "The EU would have been ok if it wasn't for you pesky Brits"
* Because the EU is in control of the process and the timescale;, they are bigger than us and therefore need the deal less than we do; because Theresa May is throwing away our best negotiating tactic - staying put until we get what we want - because she is scared of the Brexiteers.
http://order-order.com/2016/12/14/boris-aide-joins-edelman-mays-aides-forced/
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/aleppo-falls-to-syrian-regime-bashar-al-assad-rebels-uk-government-more-than-one-story-robert-fisk-a7471576.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38301548
Just glad it doesn't appear to be affecting Windows 7.
Apple FTW
https://twitter.com/rcolvile/status/808953559681273860
Edit: I think Davis could be a case study for the Dunning-Krueger effect
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. (Wikipedia)
Thatcher getting the rebate was probably the last good deal the UK got.
The Single European Act and Maastricht to name but two were good deals the U.K. obtained post Fontainebleau
Also, Thatcher got us something back. Major only get us an opt-out of the tentacles grabbing even more power.
It will be interesting to see how the eurozone goes in the near future, likewise EU politics.
I said that scientists can be subjective, but compared to lawyers we're bulwarks of objectivity. We set a high bar for verification, but in law it's who can shout most efficiently. And even worse, the prevailing opinion gets codified into law as a fact to be followed henceforth. Is it really a job for an adult?
A QC qualification is on a par with a boy scout's badge for fire-lighting - and at least we know the fire is lit.
The median was still twice the correct answer though.
Or perhaps not.
" The recent Casey Report said some there believed 75% of the UK was Muslim."
That's a good point. How useful is the survey without an indication of the sampling method?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/russia-hack-election-dnc.html
Yes that graphic is mind blowing. Or unbelievable. Or incredible. Or fantastic.
Perhaps it correlates better with something like "How much do you think about the Muslims in our country?"
Given the amount of money in the DNC, their IT team were shit at setting things up, and shit at handling the problems when they occurred. They should have know that a political party would be a target for hackers
No sympathy. At all.
We've had
- Comey
- Fake News
- Stupid Voters
- Russians
- Electoral Fraud
And none of them are sticking unless you want to believe them regardless. The only significant electoral fraud has been conducted by Hillary fans as video'd by Veritas, there's no evidence of sophisticated Russian hacking - Podesta clicked on a phishing link and actually told thousands of people his user name and password in an email.
The CIA are in some peculiar proxy war with the FBI over this - and frankly I don't believe a word the CIA says about anything since their day job is lying.
In ten years, no one has credibly challenged the content of Wikileaks - they get rubbished, but never proven wrong. The Left loved them when they were embarrassing the Right - now it's the Russkies fault - pfft.
The US liberals need to get over themselves - they lost the contest using the rules that applied.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/russian-interference-brexit-highly-probable-referendum-hacking-putin-a7472706.html
Don't see it myself - not aware of a preponderance of embarrassing leaks from REMAIN over LEAVE - both were pretty good at shovelling ordure over themselves and each other.....
This is going to be the problem - while I've no doubt it is in Russia's strategic interest to undermine the EU, and BREXIT almost certainly helps that - I am not aware of any 'events' - like the Democrats leaked emails which occurred in the campaign to indicate that.....
Anyone stupid enough to email their own password/username to a bunch of people is asking for it.
Assange indicated that the DNC staffer murdered in a random street shooting was the source. It was a very small nod, but seized on. I've no view here - but being a source, and then shortly later shot in the back in broad daylight doesn't help to defuse motives.
If you had, you'd have seen it didn't claim what you attacked it for, in many ways the biggest 'villains of the piece' are the US Media.
Oh dear, oh dear...
Bear in mind the number of Muslims would probably halve if only observant Muslims were included too.
#Muslimslikeus was quite fascinating on BBC2, well worth catching.
I suspect Bradshaws 'hackers' comment really means the excessive posting of dodgy news, Facebook twitter, etc. Sputnik opening an office in Edinburgh is an obvious example.
Nothing to get too paranoid about but just something to be aware of. Gary Kasparov has a good comment along the lines of the purpose of propaganda and infowars not being to make you believe but to dull your senses in being able to evaluate the truth.
Ironically, this is the sort of project for which they should have got a dedicated mail server, behind a VPN and firewall, with a white list of appproved and managed devices allowed to connect to it - exactly the same as any large company does!!!!!
Hopefully politicians and staffers of all stripes will learn from this.
1. Spend money on IT infrastructure and people, it can and will save your reputation. A mail server with support would have cost them no more than $100k a year, and the admin guy could probably have done a load more stuff with them at the same time - like secure their Dropbox or whatever, that they were lucky not to get hacked in the same way!
2. Assume that anything sent by email might end up as public domain. Have secret strategy discussions as actual meetings or video conferences, rather than by long email chains.
A Labour shadow minister has branded striking Southern Rail workers “admirable” amid the worst disruption to the train network in years.
While more than 300,000 commuters were left stranded at stations across London on Tuesday, the opposition’s transport secretary Andy McDonald pledged to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with union members.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/labour-transport-chief-praises-guts-of-striking-southern-rail-workers-a3419651.html
Emailing your username and password to a bunch of people is cretinous. Who on PB would do this? It's worse than falling for a Nigerian Prince offering you £50m.
Don't want Turkish Delight.