Not at all. When you negotiate you need to know what your end game is and what you want. They seem to have as little idea as us. How do they want to trade with the U.K. after we leave? It’s an important question and watching the U.K. government flannel about may be amusing but it is no answer. They should be making constructive proposals which meet their objectives and criteria. They have completely failed to do so.
I disagree. They identified and ruthlessly pursued their objective of dissuading any other country to contemplate leaving.
It's weird how British people have to be so Basil Fawlty about everything. Either everyone's going to surrender before the majesty of your domestic auto markets or the whole thing's an evil plot to make an example of you.
Here's what's happening. There are two models the British might like, Norway and Canada. But the British say they don't want a border in NI, and the EU agree since this is what Ireland wants, and that isn't compatible with Canada, so NI has to be Norway. Now the British need to decide whether they want the whole UK to be Norway, or just for NI to be Norway, with an internal border between that and Canada.
That's basically it. The EU will deal, but they need something logically and practically possible, and that keeps control of their borders, because they have right-wingers worried about that too. No doubt there will be some hardball on the detail, but the reason this thing is stalled is because the British can't agree on an actual practical thing they want the EU to give them.
I think you mean the Conservative politicians who make up Mrs May`s failing government cannot agree, Mr Edmund. I think the British people are coming to agree that the best solution is to remain in the EU. There is no appetite for a collapse of the British economy, leading to social disorder and the introduction of a state of emergency, eventually to a May Dictatorship. Likewise there is no appetite for a Corbyn Socialist dictatorship, arising out of the same circumstances.
Since the last two general elections were characterised by cheating and corruption, I think it is fair to say that this Conservative government has no legitimacy anyway. And neither does Cameron`s stupid Referendum.
There's no majority in the House (and less so in the Conservative Party) for any particular deal. Ergo, no particular deal will be passed. This leaves us with No Deal.
The question is simply between planned No Deal and crash No Deal. The one looks painful. The other looks horrible. Arguably, adopting EEA would meet the letter of the referendum and be acceptable to the EU and minimise damage, but that would certainly necessitate explicit electoral buy-in, and I doubt the Government want another referendum, there's very limited time and it may be unachievable, and would probably lose in a referendum in any case as the downsides of No Deal are not visible to the public and wouldn't be well publicised in the run-up to the referendum in any case. The Remain side poisoned the well on warning when they went overboard in the run-up to the referendum.
On the customs border thing, maybe the minds of pb.com can help my confusion. The problem seems to be:
1 - If we leave the Single Market and Customs Union, we will need a customs border with the EU. This seems unavoidable - the former means we won't have similar regulations governing what things are and their treatment; the latter that we'll have different customs rates. Given WTO rules, abandoning all customs checks by stating we won't put any tariffs on them means that: a - We won't have any right to put tariffs on anyone else's stuff, either, thanks to MFN rules b - If the EU were to follow suit, they also will give up the right to put tariffs on anything else from anyone else. This is therefore not going to happen.
2 - This necessitates a border, with checks. Technology can help, but won't plausibly remove the need in any short-term timescale.
3 - The Good Friday Agreement in Ireland means there must not be such a border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
You are missing that Brexiteers do not understand why Customs Unions are better than Free Trade Agreements. So far as I can tell, most Leavers regard FTAs as magic talismans and ipso facto a good thing that can be had without prolonged negotiation or loss of sovereignty and control, which is what all this was supposed to be about.
When we leave the Single Market , we also lose 50 FTA's that the EU have already signed up to. Therefore, on 30th March, we will no longer have any trade agreements with the EU27 plus those 50 odd countires.
O/T, I am looking to get a new personal computer. I want something relatively flexible in terms of weight/size (i.e. not a table top) I can take around. Big screen not essential as I can plug in to a larger screen. I am not a gamer so don't need huge capacity here around graphics, but would like something which can do a few functions at once with decent memory. Budget 750-850, I could go a little higher if the benefits are obvious.
I am not an Apple person, but had looked at a Surface Pro? Any comments and advice welcome. I know when I asked about mobile phones, PB.com were enthusiastic in advice!
As others have said, get a branded laptop with decent memory and a solid state disk and you won't go far wrong. My wife's Dell Inspiron 5000 cost £800, has 16GB memory and 512GB SSD and does her very well for anything.
It's always f'ing frustrating to run out of memory (e.g. when an antivirus program spools up, or you have a fair few tabs open in a browser). PCs can be easy to upgradde, but laptops can be an absolute pain.
SO IMV a first priority is to get *more* memory than you think you need. Second would be a good SSD. Third a reasonable battery life. Fourth processor power.
Spool is an interesting verb when talking about solid state memory.
I was talking more about the AV program starting a check, and hence going through loads of files and sucking up memory. But yes, 'spool' wasn't the right word to use. I do tend to use it for programs initialising, though I can't recall why. Perhaps some ancient thing I worked with used it in such a context.
On the customs border thing, maybe the minds of pb.com can help my confusion. The problem seems to be:
1 - If we leave the Single Market and Customs Union, we will need a customs border with the EU. This seems unavoidable - the former means we won't have similar regulations governing what things are and their treatment; the latter that we'll have different customs rates. Given WTO rules, abandoning all customs checks by stating we won't put any tariffs on them means that: a - We won't have any right to put tariffs on anyone else's stuff, either, thanks to MFN rules b - If the EU were to follow suit, they also will give up the right to put tariffs on anything else from anyone else. This is therefore not going to happen.
2 - This necessitates a border, with checks. Technology can help, but won't plausibly remove the need in any short-term timescale.
3 - The Good Friday Agreement in Ireland means there must not be such a border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
There would be a fudge on Ireland. We don’t need to put a border in place (it’s our only land border and under WTO rules we just say ‘this (business declaration, SME exemption) is how we deal with all our land borders’.
And from the EU's side? They do, after all, have lost more in the way of land borders and it only needs for one side to need to put up a border.
Have the WTO turn a blind eye.
That seems... an optimistic suggestion. "We will explicitly break the regulations of the WTO and ask them to ignore it" doesn't seem a solid platform for an open-ended situation. Is there no way of getting an explicit exemption passed by the WTO? (If not, the hope that the WTO will ignore it forever seems rather a stretch)
I think the WTO would accommodate the situation in Ireland given the history of violence.
A reasonable hypothesis, but there are two contradictory thoughts.
"but on the whole they’re up for a bit of socialism for a change." and "people get that he’s a dogged socialist." The latter phrase is shorthand for he's a a Trot, and they don't do "a bit."
As the famous line in 'Cabaret' nearly says … "Do you still think you can control them, Neil?"
I understand why they need to get a broader alliance on show, but when push comes to shove, jezza won't water down his principles. He no longer wears a string vest, and he's learned to speak politics (better than Mrs May), but he hasn't got a decade to see 'proper socialism' gradually come in the UK, and he won't wait.
Pah! File under 'bogeyman scare stories'.
Jezza as PM would only be able to do what parliament will allow. Labour are unlikely to have an outright majority; Momentum will definitely not have one.
He will have control over Number 11 Downing Street and we saw how much damage Gordon Brown as a non-socialist lefty did there. The damage that Corbyn and McDonnell could do from Downing Street is much greater.
Nothing Gordon Brown did is going to damage the country as much as Brexit.
Um, didn't he sign the Lisbon Treaty and (in)directly cause all this?
Gordon Brown did sign the Lisbon Treaty which caused all this by for the first time allowing members to leave.
But if by "cause all this" you mean create the things Brexiteers complain about, then no. Lisbon weakened the Commission. Leavers' problems come from Maastricht (Major) and the Single European Act (Thatcher) and perhaps even joining in the first place -- all down to pro-European Conservative governments.
On the customs border thing, maybe the minds of pb.com can help my confusion. The problem seems to be:
1 - If we leave the Single Market and Customs Union, we will need a customs border with the EU. This seems unavoidable - the former means we won't have similar regulations governing what things are and their treatment; the latter that we'll have different customs rates. Given WTO rules, abandoning all customs checks by stating we won't put any tariffs on them means that: a - We won't have any right to put tariffs on anyone else's stuff, either, thanks to MFN rules b - If the EU were to follow suit, they also will give up the right to put tariffs on anything else from anyone else. This is therefore not going to happen.
2 - This necessitates a border, with checks. Technology can help, but won't plausibly remove the need in any short-term timescale.
3 - The Good Friday Agreement in Ireland means there must not be such a border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
There would be a fudge on Ireland. We don’t need to put a border in place (it’s our only land border and under WTO rules we just say ‘this (business declaration, SME exemption) is how we deal with all our land borders’.
And from the EU's side? They do, after all, have lost more in the way of land borders and it only needs for one side to need to put up a border.
Have the WTO turn a blind eye.
That seems... an optimistic suggestion. "We will explicitly break the regulations of the WTO and ask them to ignore it" doesn't seem a solid platform for an open-ended situation. Is there no way of getting an explicit exemption passed by the WTO? (If not, the hope that the WTO will ignore it forever seems rather a stretch)
I think the WTO would exacerbate the situation in Ireland given the history of violence.
With great respect you are underestimating the sensible Leave case. There is a difference between being a state in a federal union & being a nation state co-operating on matters with other nation states.
I have no doubt that I am underestimating / misunderstanding the "... sensible Leave case ... " - such a thing does not seem to exist in the public domain, but probably because it is there but gets drowned by the "lunatic Leave case"
Some Leavers may have felt that the EU’s path to one state would effectively have led to the abolition of the nation state. You can see that in the concept of EU citizenship & no discrimination between EU citizens which, as far as Britain was concerned, meant that it had to give the same welfare benefits to someone who has just arrived as to a British citizen living here for decades. In short a British citizen had no special claim on his/her government/state than anyone else. You might think that fine but it does rather lead to a very different idea of the nation state.
I do think that the time of the Nation State is drawing to an end. Whilst they were fine and dandy for improving living conditions and public health and education they did also cause a lot of grief (just look at history). I like to think that humanity has reached the point where cooperation and pooling resources (and sovereignty) is now the way forward.
Or take law. In most of the EU there is civil law, no trial by jury, no concept of reasonable doubt or burden of proof or rules against the use of hearsay evidence. If you are going to have ever closer union & one effective state which law will be used in an EU-wide criminal law system? Would you be happy with the abolition of trial by jury or the burden of proof?
The EU is lawless? Or just different? In the UK, less than 1% of trials have a jury. We do, of course, have civil law and a different approach to law in general.
I used to be a rather lukewarm Leaver (pre-referendum). Having seen the shambles both main parties have become, I have little faith in our current system.
On the customs border thing, maybe the minds of pb.com can help my confusion. The problem seems to be:
1 - If we leave the Single Market and Customs Union, we will need a customs border with the EU. This seems unavoidable - the former means we won't have similar regulations governing what things are and their treatment; the latter that we'll have different customs rates. Given WTO rules, abandoning all customs checks by stating we won't put any tariffs on them means that: a - We won't have any right to put tariffs on anyone else's stuff, either, thanks to MFN rules b - If the EU were to follow suit, they also will give up the right to put tariffs on anything else from anyone else. This is therefore not going to happen.
2 - This necessitates a border, with checks. Technology can help, but won't plausibly remove the need in any short-term timescale.
3 - The Good Friday Agreement in Ireland means there must not be such a border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
There would be a fudge on Ireland. We don’t need to put a border in place (it’s our only land border and under WTO rules we just say ‘this (business declaration, SME exemption) is how we deal with all our land borders’.
And from the EU's side? They do, after all, have lost more in the way of land borders and it only needs for one side to need to put up a border.
Have the WTO turn a blind eye.
That seems... an optimistic suggestion. "We will explicitly break the regulations of the WTO and ask them to ignore it" doesn't seem a solid platform for an open-ended situation. Is there no way of getting an explicit exemption passed by the WTO? (If not, the hope that the WTO will ignore it forever seems rather a stretch)
I think the WTO would accommodate the situation in Ireland given the history of violence.
In which case, it would seem a smart move for us to get them to say that on the record; this would kill off the need for the "backstop agreement" and remove a significant issue with the CETA option. And make a practical deal that much easier (if the other side is citing a problem with a third party, get the third party to remove the problem and you've won the issue in question)
I was talking more about the AV program starting a check, and hence going through loads of files and sucking up memory. But yes, 'spool' wasn't the right word to use. I do tend to use it for programs initialising, though I can't recall why. Perhaps some ancient thing I worked with used it in such a context.
Google says it more typically refers to jet engines!
On the customs border thing, maybe the minds of pb.com can help my confusion. The problem seems to be:
1 - If we leave the Single Market and Customs Union, we will need a customs border with the EU. This seems unavoidable - the former means we won't have similar regulations governing what things are and their treatment; the latter that we'll have different customs rates. Given WTO rules, abandoning all customs checks by stating we won't put any tariffs on them means that: a - We won't have any right to put tariffs on anyone else's stuff, either, thanks to MFN rules b - If the EU were to follow suit, they also will give up the right to put tariffs on anything else from anyone else. This is therefore not going to happen.
2 - This necessitates a border, with checks. Technology can help, but won't plausibly remove the need in any short-term timescale.
3 - The Good Friday Agreement in Ireland means there must not be such a border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
There would be a fudge on Ireland. We don’t need to put a border in place (it’s our only land border and under WTO rules we just say ‘this (business declaration, SME exemption) is how we deal with all our land borders’.
And from the EU's side? They do, after all, have lost more in the way of land borders and it only needs for one side to need to put up a border.
Have the WTO turn a blind eye.
That seems... an optimistic suggestion. "We will explicitly break the regulations of the WTO and ask them to ignore it" doesn't seem a solid platform for an open-ended situation. Is there no way of getting an explicit exemption passed by the WTO? (If not, the hope that the WTO will ignore it forever seems rather a stretch)
I think the WTO would exacerbate the situation in Ireland given the history of violence.
Fixed.
I doubt it, they don't want blood on their hands any more than the next person, if it means turning a blind eye to whatever arrangement the UK and EU come up with they will probably live with it. Eventually the "border 2.0" concept will replace it anyway.
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
I am increasingly of the view that, if you accept that the Good Friday Agreement requires there to be no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (which I do accept) then it would also imply that there cannot be a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain either.
This reduces your option set to: Break the Good Friday Agreement or stay in the SM+CU. (There is a third option whereby Ireland also leaves the EU to join a British Single Market and Customs Union, but I think we can discount that option for now).
The former option is the default option. The latter option does have the merit of satisfying the letter of the [advisory] referendum, as well as freeing us from the CAP, CFP and the political union, but it gives us less control over our laws and does not allow us the immigration control that was so central to the referendum campaign.
There has been little to no attempt to prepare the ground for SM+CU as an acceptable compromise between the 52% and the 48%, and, with the present leaderships in the Commons I doubt it would pass even were May to survive to attempt to propose it.
Not at all. When you negotiate you need to know what your end game is and what you want. They seem to have as little idea as us. How do they want to trade with the U.K. after we leave? It’s an important question and watching the U.K. government flannel about may be amusing but it is no answer. They should be making constructive proposals which meet their objectives and criteria. They have completely failed to do so.
I disagree. They identified and ruthlessly pursued their objective of dissuading any other country to contemplate leaving.
It's weird how British people have to be so Basil Fawlty about everything. Either everyone's going to surrender before the majesty of your domestic auto markets or the whole thing's an evil plot to make an example of you.
Here's what's happening. There are two models the British might like, Norway and Canada. But the British say they don't want a border in NI, and the EU agree since this is what Ireland wants, and that isn't compatible with Canada, so NI has to be Norway. Now the British need to decide whether they want the whole UK to be Norway, or just for NI to be Norway, with an internal border between that and Canada.
That's basically it. The EU will deal, but they need something logically and practically possible, and that keeps control of their borders, because they have right-wingers worried about that too. No doubt there will be some hardball on the detail, but the reason this thing is stalled is because the British can't agree on an actual practical thing they want the EU to give them.
In the end, Parliament will vote for Norway through an amendment and after some hoo-hah it will be accepted. This is one vote where , in theory, there can be a majority.
If this is not done then it is:
1. No deal 2. Another GE where I cannot see the leadership of either main party will change their positions. The arithmetic may. 3. Another vote which could have a new result including maintaining status quo.
Mr. JohnL, signing Lisbon contrary to the manifesto promise for a referendum also did very serious damage to trust in politicians, especially on the EU.
Not at all. When you negotiate you need to know what your end game is and what you want. They seem to have as little idea as us. How do they want to trade with the U.K. after we leave? It’s an important question and watching the U.K. government flannel about may be amusing but it is no answer. They should be making constructive proposals which meet their objectives and criteria. They have completely failed to do so.
I disagree. They identified and ruthlessly pursued their objective of dissuading any other country to contemplate leaving.
It's weird how British people have to be so Basil Fawlty about everything. Either everyone's going to surrender before the majesty of your domestic auto markets or the whole thing's an evil plot to make an example of you.
Here's what's happening. There are two models the British might like, Norway and Canada. But the British say they don't want a border in NI, and the EU agree since this is what Ireland wants, and that isn't compatible with Canada, so NI has to be Norway. Now the British need to decide whether they want the whole UK to be Norway, or just for NI to be Norway, with an internal border between that and Canada.
That's basically it. The EU will deal, but they need something logically and practically possible, and that keeps control of their borders, because they have right-wingers worried about that too. No doubt there will be some hardball on the detail, but the reason this thing is stalled is because the British can't agree on an actual practical thing they want the EU to give them.
Since the last two general elections were characterised by cheating and corruption, I think it is fair to say that this Conservative government has no legitimacy anyway. And neither does Cameron`s stupid Referendum.
If you have evidence of widespread electoral corruption, you should take it to the police.
With great respect you are underestimating the sensible Leave case. There is a difference between being a state in a federal union & being a nation state co-operating on matters with other nation states.
Some Leavers of the nation state.
Or take law. In most of the EU there is civil law, no trial by jury, no concept of reasonable doubt or burden of proof or rules against the use of hearsay evidence. If you are going to have ever closer union & one effective state which law will be used in an EU-wide criminal law system? Would you be happy with the abolition of trial by jury or the burden of proof?
We have already seen what happens with the EAW where bureaucratic convenience has been allowed to trump the claims of justice (a requesting state does not even have to prove a prima facie case, which is utterly offensive when you are dealing with the liberty of individuals).
The EU’s path to ever closer union has sought to ignore the fact that this inevitably means the loss of the traditional nation state or its change to something very different. It has not honestly addressed what this means : for law, political representation, control over politicians & many other factors. It has sought to justify it on the basis of economic benefits. But those economic benefits are also achievable by nation states co-operating without the necessity for political union. Remainers have, in part, failed because they have not properly addressed these very real concerns about where the EU is heading & what this means for the very idea of the nation-state as Britain understands it. (I accept that other nations may have a very different idea of nationhood, its costs & benefits.) The EU was not the status quo because - & this was key for some Leavers I know - it was where it was going to they did not like not where it was. If they thought it was going to remain where it was they could have lived with that.
An extended rehash of the "we only wanted a common market, not the political stuff" argument that has been around since the 1975 vote. Except that now a common market without the political stuff is apparently unacceptable to these very same leavers. Even to "sensible" ones, insofar as that is possible.
On topic, can I say that Myburningears first two paragaphs and Cyclefree's latest post are excellent. They capture my position as a 'moderate Leaver'. I regard myself as a conservative so I had to think long and hard about voting Leave. I knew it would be complex and messy and I am wary of grand visions. But Cameron's failure to get a good deal pushed me from 'reform within' to 'reform outside'. I think we can, over time, get a suitable associate membership status that would serve us and the rest of the EU well. Brexit was a dramatic way of attaining it in some ways, but could have been less dramatic if we had moved (and could still move) to a more gentle, medium-term decoupling of ourselves from the EU's structures. This is what frustrates me about the very ideological Brexiteers - they risk the whole project for purity at this stage. I get that they worry we will be in a hybrid status for ever, but this isn't necessarily so. Maybe EFTA membership then you work add-ons over time could help? But we must see this in bigger picture terms about trends in governance and I remain of the view outside of the EU's political structures is right for the UK.
Off topic, thanks again for laptop advice. Grabcocque, is the security of fingerprints you mentioned on laptops the same for smart phones? I never activated my phone's fingerprint security for fear of the cloud storing it!
Spool is an interesting verb when talking about solid state memory.
I was talking more about the AV program starting a check, and hence going through loads of files and sucking up memory. But yes, 'spool' wasn't the right word to use. I do tend to use it for programs initialising, though I can't recall why. Perhaps some ancient thing I worked with used it in such a context.
IBM Midrange machines like the S/36 and AS/400 used SPOOL as an acronym for Simultaneous Peripheral Output OnLine a.k.a. The Printer Queue.
IBM also denied that they made excessive use of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms). Anyone who ever dealt with midrange machines will be rolling on the floor laughing at that one....
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
I am increasingly of the view that, if you accept that the Good Friday Agreement requires there to be no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (which I do accept) then it would also imply that there cannot be a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain either.
.
There's nothing explicit in the GFA about Northern Ireland remaining within the EU, EEA, or Customs Union.
If the argument is that it is implicit that there is no hard border between North and South, then it must also be implicit that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
And on Chequers, I remain baffled that given the EU are saying no that everyone is just continuing on. Time to commit to no deal, horrible as it may be, May cannot fudge a deal from what the EU have said.
It seems pretty obvious to me now that the EU's strategy is to run down the clock. They no longer want a deal, they want to force the UK to choose between to equally humiliating alternatives: pleading for an extension or crashing out with no deal.
The EU doesn't want an extension I think, and they wouldn't mind a deal. But it'll be THEIR deal on humiliating terms for the PM. But they are not depserate for a deal in the way May will be. This isn't an arms length transaction between two equal entities.
Indeed not. The EU now sense that they have within its grasp the opportunity to internationally humiliate the UK. This is too good an opportunity to miss.
But surely we hold all the cards? Don't they need us more than we need them after all then?!
We have a trade deficit with the EU so yes they do
Amazing how many people persist seeing this only in cash terms, not as a % of GDP.
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
I am increasingly of the view that, if you accept that the Good Friday Agreement requires there to be no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (which I do accept) then it would also imply that there cannot be a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain either.
This reduces your option set to: Break the Good Friday Agreement or stay in the SM+CU. (There is a third option whereby Ireland also leaves the EU to join a British Single Market and Customs Union, but I think we can discount that option for now).
The former option is the default option. The latter option does have the merit of satisfying the letter of the [advisory] referendum, as well as freeing us from the CAP, CFP and the political union, but it gives us less control over our laws and does not allow us the immigration control that was so central to the referendum campaign.
There has been little to no attempt to prepare the ground for SM+CU as an acceptable compromise between the 52% and the 48%, and, with the present leaderships in the Commons I doubt it would pass even were May to survive to attempt to propose it.
We therefore crash out.
More recently than the Brexit Referendum result, we had a General Election where 86.6% of the votes were cast for parties who pledged in their manifesto to implement Brexit, and leave the SM and CU.
The unmnetioned option to resolve any confusion is another election.....
IBM Midrange machines like the S/36 and AS/400 used SPOOL as an acronym for Simultaneous Peripheral Output OnLine a.k.a. The Printer Queue.
IBM also denied that they made excessive use of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms). Anyone who ever dealt with midrange machines will be rolling on the floor laughing at that one....
The self-effacing phrase “TDM TLA” (Too Damn Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin “What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?” Paul's straight-faced response: “There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms.” (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is probably some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became a journalist.
But even if a fudge is on from Europe's side, it's not really on from Britain's. Political numbers mean that it's something like Chequers or nothing. And as nothing isn't worth talking about, that's why people are 'just carrying on', as you rightly put it.
TBF this hoary old canard, that we can simply "go over the commision's head" to the Council is one of those Brexiteer fantasies I assumed had gone down in flames 12 months ago.
The commission is negotiating withing the parameters given to it *by* the council. We're not going to go over the commission's head, because the commission is implementing the council's line. French, German, Irish government members all publicly reiterated their commitment to the commission's strategy only last week.
Also bear in mind that any deal would need the approval of the European parliament, and that's currently in even more of a mood to give the UK a kicking than the commission is.
In the very, very unlikely event the UK is able to drive a wedge between the council and commission, it's nailed on the European parliament will side with the commission.
Not to mention we would also have to go over their heads and appeal directly to the EU Parliament - or is their support for any deal a given as well?
Spool is an interesting verb when talking about solid state memory.
Yet we call them "solid state drives". The skeuomorph of solid state memory just being like a reel of very fast tape is an alluring one.
skeuomorph ˈskjuːə(ʊ)mɔːf/
noun: skeuomorph; plural noun: skeuomorphs
An object or feature which imitates the design of a similar artefact made from another material. "the pottery box with a square lid is a skeuomorph of a twilled basketry container"
Computing An element of a graphical user interface which mimics a physical object. "Note-taking apps offer skeuomorphs of yellow legal pads, squared paper, ring binders, etc."
How we all learn on PB. Should PB be given a grant from the Dept of Education?
On the customs border thing, maybe the minds of pb.com can help my confusion. The problem seems to be:
1 - If we leave the Single Market and Customs Union, we will need a customs border with the EU. This seems unavoidable - the former means we won't have similar regulations governing what things are and their treatment; the latter that we'll have different customs rates. Given WTO rules, abandoning all customs checks by stating we won't put any tariffs on them means that: a - We won't have any right to put tariffs on anyone else's stuff,
2 - This necessitates a border, with checks. Technology can help, but won't plausibly remove the need in any short-term timescale.
3 - The Good Friday Agreement in Ireland means there must not be such a border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
There would be a fudge on Ireland. We don’t need to put a border in place (it’s our only land border and under WTO rules we just say ‘this (business declaration, SME exemption) is how we deal with all our land borders’.
And from the EU's side? They do, after all, have lost more in the way of land borders and it only needs for one side to need to put up a border.
Have the WTO turn a blind eye.
That seems... an optimistic suggestion. "We will explicitly break the regulations of the WTO and ask them to ignore it" doesn't seem a solid platform for an open-ended situation. Is there no way of getting an explicit exemption passed by the WTO? (If not, the hope that the WTO will ignore it forever seems rather a stretch)
I think the WTO would exacerbate the situation in Ireland given the history of violence.
Fixed.
I doubt it, they don't want blood on their hands any more than the next person, if it means turning a blind eye to whatever arrangement the UK and EU come up with they will probably live with it. Eventually the "border 2.0" concept will replace it anyway.
You do realise it won’t be the EU committing the violence, don’t you?
The counter-argument is that this is all very highfalutin' and hypothetical, rather than grounded in hard and practical realities. Where's the accounting? But in a once-in-a-lifetime referendum, where you are thinking about impacts ripple out on a 20 or 30-year timescale, it's hard to avoid hypotheticals. Also for good or ill, longer term it is hard to have great faith in quantitative forecasts - just look at those error bars! - whereas principals, concepts, sentimentality and subjectivity remain as guiding-posts.
You can see that by thinking through whatever objections you have to Britain joining the USA. Had it done so in the 1960s there can be little doubt that the "accounting" side of the argument would be favourable - look at GDP/capita and compare it to other US states, and it seems overwhelmingly likely convergence would have made us rather richer. For most people the strongest, gut-visceral reasons against doing so involve values, identity, an emotional attachment to a certain vision of their country... if the dollar-denominated numbers point in another direction, should these things have been written off?
From my experience, most ardent Brexiteers can at least grasp, even if they fundamentally disagree with, those ardent eurofederalists whose dreams were shattered on referendum night. They saw British values, culture and identity as inseparably European, and saw a future that belonged in tight-knit political harmony with her neighbours.
The kind of Remainer that Brexiteers seem to find more troublesome is the "I dislike and distrust the institutions of the EU just as much as you do, but at least if we're on the inside we can reform them to our liking" brigade. "After all, we can veto any changes that take the EU in a direction we're uncomfortable with. And the EU is just as likely to give powers back as it is to take new ones. The countries of the eurozone may seek deeper integration, but that doesn't mean their fundamental interests will at some point diverge from us and we'll find ourselves outvoted on the fringes. Sweden and Denmark will support us, and there'll be a few smaller states on the east of Europe, at least until they adopt the euro as well..."
An interesting observation both Brexiteers and that category of Remainer see themselves as the "realist". And the other as naive, simplistic, even deluded.
An interesting observation both Brexiteers and that category of Remainer see themselves as the "realist". And the other as naive, simplistic, even deluded.
JRM says we won't know if Brexit is a success for 50 years.
Does that not also mean it is too early to say whether our membership is a success or not?
Of course the Norway option isn't strictly available to the UK because it would be Norway plus Customs Union. One advantage for some Brexiteers of Norway, at least as a staging post, seemed to be that you get single market and the ability to make your own trade deals. But we are told that the CU is a deal breaker re. Ireland/N.Ireland and this then weakens the Norway case, not to mention the rather large free movement point.
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
I am increasingly of the view that, if you accept that the Good Friday Agreement requires there to be no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (which I do accept) then it would also imply that there cannot be a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain either.
.
There's nothing explicit in the GFA about Northern Ireland remaining within the EU, EEA, or Customs Union.
If the argument is that it is implicit that there is no hard border between North and South, then it must also be implicit that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
It's not explicit, no, but central to the GFA is accepting that it is legitimate for people in Northern Ireland to aspire to a United Ireland, and to consider themselves Irish, and to hold an Irish passport (and not a British passport) if they so wish. I think it's pretty clear that dropping a customs border that cuts what they [legitimately] perceive as one country into two would contradict that undertaking.
And, yes, given the parity between the two communities that is also established in the GFA, then the same argument applies to a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain [but this isn't an argument that the DUP et al want to make because they argue it is acceptable to impose the border between the 6 counties and the 26.
Not at all. When you negotiate you need to know what your end game is and what you want. They seem to have as little idea as us. How do they want to trade with the U.K. after we leave? It’s an important question and watching the U.K. government flannel about may be amusing but it is no answer. They should be making constructive proposals which meet their objectives and criteria. They have completely failed to do so.
I disagree. They identified and ruthlessly pursued their objective of dissuading any other country to contemplate leaving.
It's weird how British people have to be so Basil Fawlty about everything. Either everyone's going to surrender before the majesty of your domestic auto markets or the whole thing's an evil plot to make an example of you.
Here's what's happening. There are two models the British might like, Norway and Canada. But the British say they don't want a border in NI, and the EU agree since this is what Ireland wants, and that isn't compatible with Canada, so NI has to be Norway. Now the British need to decide whether they want the whole UK to be Norway, or just for NI to be Norway, with an internal border between that and Canada.
That's basically it. The EU will deal, but they need something logically and practically possible, and that keeps control of their borders, because they have right-wingers worried about that too. No doubt there will be some hardball on the detail, but the reason this thing is stalled is because the British can't agree on an actual practical thing they want the EU to give them.
EEA does not solve NI border issue. There is no food in the EEA so their is a border between Sweden and Norway. IF you add CU on, apart from a host of other problems there is still no food, because there are food regs in the SM, packaging, labelling, protected names etc, which are still missing. So their is still a border. If Ireland will accept no change to the border as it is now, which is their position then the only solution is FULL SM membership (not partial with EEA) and CU. So the only solution acceptable to the EU is the UK not leaving or the UK having a special deal where the only part of the EU we leave is the Parliament and our Commissioner. Any other deal is dependent on the Irish accepting a degree of friction in the customs process.
O/T, I am looking to get a new personal computer. I want something relatively flexible in terms of weight/size (i.e. not a table top) I can take around. Big screen not essential as I can plug in to a larger screen. I am not a gamer so don't need huge capacity here around graphics, but would like something which can do a few functions at once with decent memory. Budget 750-850, I could go a little higher if the benefits are obvious.
I am not an Apple person, but had looked at a Surface Pro? Any comments and advice welcome. I know when I asked about mobile phones, PB.com were enthusiastic in advice!
Just order from Dell. You will get a laptop that meets your price point and, these days, almost any computer will do what most of us need.
Do get one with lots of memory. If you can add extra memory - double the amount the machine comes with. Excess memory improves performance far, far, far more than processors or disc.
Also, insist on one with a decent size SSD drive - 256Gb if you don't intend downloading a lot of stuff for use offline e.g.for holidays (TV/movies, lots of hi-res photos), otherwise 512Gb.
You do realise it won’t be the EU committing the violence, don’t you?
Yes? It doesn't change the fact that if the EU imposes a border from the north into the south it will likely result in violence by the IRA on both sides of the border.
Yes? It doesn't change the fact that if the EU imposes a border from the north into the south it will likely result in violence by the IRA on both sides of the border.
I think you mean the Conservative politicians who make up Mrs May`s failing government cannot agree, Mr Edmund. I think the British people are coming to agree that the best solution is to remain in the EU. There is no appetite for a collapse of the British economy, leading to social disorder and the introduction of a state of emergency, eventually to a May Dictatorship. Likewise there is no appetite for a Corbyn Socialist dictatorship, arising out of the same circumstances.
Since the last two general elections were characterised by cheating and corruption, I think it is fair to say that this Conservative government has no legitimacy anyway. And neither does Cameron`s stupid Referendum.
I feel your pain but your post is written from wanting to remain, notwithstanding the referendum.
The reason we are where we are is not Cameron's stupid referendum as you call it, but the fact remain failed to make a positive case for the EU other than trying to frighten us to stay in.
I hope TM middle way will result in agreement but if the EU, and the Commission especially, continue to reject our overtures I fear there will be a rapid change of mood against the EU and a hard Brexit will become a very real possibility.
I am opposed to such a Brexit unless a clear path to plan and mitigate the damage is promoted by TM and the cabinet.
A few weeks ago I thought a second referendum would vote remain but day by day I see that becoming more and more unlikely no matter the damage to both sides
Yes? It doesn't change the fact that if the EU imposes a border from the north into the south it will likely result in violence by the IRA on both sides of the border.
We voted for it
And? It is up to the EU/Ireland to impose a hard border going north to south. We can choose not to do the opposite.
But even if a fudge is on from Europe's side, it's not really on from Britain's. Political numbers mean that it's something like Chequers or nothing. And as nothing isn't worth talking about, that's why people are 'just carrying on', as you rightly put it.
TBF this hoary old canard, that we can simply "go over the commision's head" to the Council is one of those Brexiteer fantasies I assumed had gone down in flames 12 months ago.
The commission is negotiating withing the parameters given to it *by* the council. We're not going to go over the commission's head, because the commission is implementing the council's line. French, German, Irish government members all publicly reiterated their commitment to the commission's strategy only last week.
Also bear in mind that any deal would need the approval of the European parliament, and that's currently in even more of a mood to give the UK a kicking than the commission is.
In the very, very unlikely event the UK is able to drive a wedge between the council and commission, it's nailed on the European parliament will side with the commission.
Not to mention we would also have to go over their heads and appeal directly to the EU Parliament - or is their support for any deal a given as well?
Don't worry. The German car industry is going to put pressure on everyone on the EU side and then they will come to their senses and humbly accept the deal that the Tories have been graciously pleased to offer.
It's well known that the UK holds the cards in this process, Michael Gove himself said so.
O/T, I am looking to get a new personal computer. I want something relatively flexible in terms of weight/size (i.e. not a table top) I can take around. Big screen not essential as I can plug in to a larger screen. I am not a gamer so don't need huge capacity here around graphics, but would like something which can do a few functions at once with decent memory. Budget 750-850, I could go a little higher if the benefits are obvious.
I am not an Apple person, but had looked at a Surface Pro? Any comments and advice welcome. I know when I asked about mobile phones, PB.com were enthusiastic in advice!
Just order from Dell. You will get a laptop that meets your price point and, these days, almost any computer will do what most of us need.
Do get one with lots of memory. If you can add extra memory - double the amount the machine comes with. Excess memory improves performance far, far, far more than processors or disc.
Also, insist on one with a decent size SSD drive - 256Gb if you don't intend downloading a lot of stuff for use offline e.g.for holidays (TV/movies, lots of hi-res photos), otherwise 512Gb.
My standard advice for laptops is:-
Dell outlet - there is a 10% voucher on twitter at the moment. Minimum 8gb RAM / 16gb is better but trade for bigger SSD (NVMe preferably) and at least 256gb SSD Screen resolution you want at least 1920 x 1080 as anything worse is unusable nowadays.
after that its a combination of swapping price for weight (less is more).
Perhaps the easiest solution will be the reunification of Ireland.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
Except the DUP will never agree, nor will the Conservative and Unionist Party and Unionists still make up a majority of the Northern Ireland population and Protestants are still the largest religious group in the province and the 2 most populous counties of Antrim and Down
A reasonable hypothesis, but there are two contradictory thoughts.
"but on the whole they’re up for a bit of socialism for a change." and "people get that he’s a dogged socialist." The latter phrase is shorthand for he's a a Trot, and they don't do "a bit."
As the famous line in 'Cabaret' nearly says … "Do you still think you can control them, Neil?"
I understand why they need to get a broader alliance on show, but when push comes to shove, jezza won't water down his principles. He no longer wears a string vest, and he's learned to speak politics (better than Mrs May), but he hasn't got a decade to see 'proper socialism' gradually come in the UK, and he won't wait.
Pah! File under 'bogeyman scare stories'.
Jezza as PM would only be able to do what parliament will allow. Labour are unlikely to have an outright majority; Momentum will definitely not have one.
He will have control over Number 11 Downing Street and we saw how much damage Gordon Brown as a non-socialist lefty did there. The damage that Corbyn and McDonnell could do from Downing Street is much greater.
Nothing Gordon Brown did is going to damage the country as much as Brexit.
Um, didn't he sign the Lisbon Treaty and (in)directly cause all this?
Gordon Brown did sign the Lisbon Treaty which caused all this by for the first time allowing members to leave.
But if by "cause all this" you mean create the things Brexiteers complain about, then no. Lisbon weakened the Commission. Leavers' problems come from Maastricht (Major) and the Single European Act (Thatcher) and perhaps even joining in the first place -- all down to pro-European Conservative governments.
Leavers problems also came from Blair's failure to impose transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries in 2004
You do realise it won’t be the EU committing the violence, don’t you?
Yes? It doesn't change the fact that if the EU imposes a border from the north into the south it will likely result in violence by the IRA on both sides of the border.
Which it appears they would have to do to comply with WTO rules (unless we can get an explicit exemption from those).
When looking at responsibility for events, it is customary for those who had the most freedom to do (or not do) actions that led to those events to be seen as holding the most responsibility. We will have chosen the course of action that led to that border; they will have been compelled by out actions and the rules they've signed up to with the WTO. And we will have known that before we did it.
I think not even Pontius Pilate would be able to wash that off.
On topic: If we assume that Nick is right on the likelihood of some kind of fudged deal being reached between the UK government and the EU, then the big question is whether parliament will vote it down. It's pretty clear that, despite the fact that the Leave campaign promised that we would be part of a free trade area from Ireland to Turkey, there will be a sizable chunk of opposition amongst Conservative MPs to any deal which implements that promise (these are the 'don't take yes for an answer' brigade). The key point therefore is whether that opposition will translate into the deal being vetoed by parliament.
For that to happen, the Brexit ultras - who actively want chaos, it seeems - will have to ally themselves with MPs from other parties who overwhelmingly oppose leaving without a deal. Is that going to happen? Obviously from a purely party-political point of view, opposition parties might be tempted to cause as much damage as possible in the hope of picking up power from the resultant carnage. But is it really plausible to imagine Keir Starmer, Vince Cable and Jacob Rees-Mogg going through the same lobby to defeat the government - with the knowledge that the result would be the diametric opposite of what the non-Brexiteers want, and with the electoral risk that the opposition parties would get a large part of the flak for the ensuing chaos?
Anything is possible in this febrile environment, but the scenario of any deal being rejected by such an unnatural alliance does look rather implausible.. Perhaps instead we'll see abstentions by opposition parties, as an expression of the fact that whilst they don't like this deal, they like No Deal even less.
We can debate whether the economic crash is "better or worse" than the democratic crash.
EDIT: And we can resolve both by voting.
I think that the most likely result of a second vote is that the public vote for Farage et al reassuring them that the Irish border problem is a made-up issue, and thereby vote for a crash Brexit and Britain abrogating the terms of the GFA.
It takes time and effort to change opinions and HMG is currently arguing the contrary case.
When and where is this supposed change of public opinion going to come from?
Perhaps the easiest solution will be the reunification of Ireland.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
Except the DUP will never agree, nor will the Conservative and Unionist Party and Unionists still make up a majority of the Northern Ireland population and Protestants are still the largest religious group in the province and the 2 most populous counties of Antrim and Down
Brexit has/will make unification at least thinkable, in a way that it hasn't been heretofore. Indeed there is a credible argument that it makes it very likely, sooner or later.
An interesting observation both Brexiteers and that category of Remainer see themselves as the "realist". And the other as naive, simplistic, even deluded.
JRM says we won't know if Brexit is a success for 50 years.
Does that not also mean it is too early to say whether our membership is a success or not?
This is a good and very fair question. In many ways 2016 was not an optimal time to assess the current state of the EU, its likely future direction, or the place of the UK within it. But someone could still assess things as "not sure" or "highly uncertain" yet not regard "Remain" as the safe, status quo, agnostic vote.
Putting aside what we've learned from the Brexit negotiations themselves, how much more do we know in 2018? The migration crisis now seems to have settled down. The euro crisis is no longer burning red-hot, though could easily blow up again (and potentially worse, this time round, re Italy). The economic difficulties of the European south remain largely unresolved. We are now pretty sure that Turkish entry to the EU is out - in 2016 the balance of probabilities already strongly suggested that, but it would have been a serious game-changer had it gone ahead and at the same time senior politicians were still talking up and encouraging their bid. (But a disclaimer, if we were to fast-forward ten years: note how quickly Spain, Portugal and Greece transitioned from dictatorship to Europe. Even now we probably can't write off Turkey as permanently out.) What about the rise of political extremism across Europe? Its progress remains patchy, but troubling. Any major changes to the EU's fundamental direction? Apparently not. Serious talk about a European treasury, but no concrete steps.
If the referendum had taken place in 2021 rather than 2016, no doubt it would have been influenced by the crises or events de jour. But also a few more pieces of the jigsaw about the EU's future shape would have slotted in. Still, would it have been much easier to assess the 20 or 30-year impact of one's potential vote? I doubt it, because there would have been fresh uncertainties. If the EU, particularly the Eurozone, was developing a more obviously federal shape that might have pushed some people towards Leave, though demographic shifts could well have favoured Remain.
But is it really plausible to imagine Keir Starmer, Vince Cable and Jacob Rees-Mogg going through the same lobby to defeat the government - with the knowledge that the result would be the diametric opposite of what the non-Brexiteers want, and with the electoral risk that the opposition parties would get a large part of the flak for the ensuing chaos?
If it comes to that Corbyn just doesn't have the balls to finish the government off in those circumstances.
Perhaps the easiest solution will be the reunification of Ireland.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
Except the DUP will never agree, nor will the Conservative and Unionist Party and Unionists still make up a majority of the Northern Ireland population and Protestants are still the largest religious group in the province and the 2 most populous counties of Antrim and Down
Brexit has/will make unification at least thinkable, in a way that it hasn't been heretofore. Indeed there is a credible argument that it makes it very likely, sooner or later.
No it doesn't really.
Like Scotland Brexit has really made no difference either way to whether Scotland or Northern Ireland leave the UK. In Scotland Unionist parties won a majority of the popular vote at the 2017 general election and the SNP lost over a third of their seats after the Brexit vote and the DUP win most seats and votes at both the 2017 general election and Assembly election.
What may cause Scotland to leave the UK is if Westminster fails to ultimately give Holyrood the devomax most Scots want and what may cause Northern Ireland to leave the UK is if Catholics become the largest religious group as they are majority nationalist while Protestants are majority Unionist (or at least the most Catholic counties like Fermanagh and Derry and Armagh and Tyrone may leave the UK and join the Republic of Ireland)
But is it really plausible to imagine Keir Starmer, Vince Cable and Jacob Rees-Mogg going through the same lobby to defeat the government - with the knowledge that the result would be the diametric opposite of what the non-Brexiteers want, and with the electoral risk that the opposition parties would get a large part of the flak for the ensuing chaos?
If it comes to that Corbyn just doesn't have the balls to finish the government off in those circumstances.
He might do - but he'd have to carry his parliamentary party, as well as MPs from other parties, including the SNP, with him.
IBM Midrange machines like the S/36 and AS/400 used SPOOL as an acronym for Simultaneous Peripheral Output OnLine a.k.a. The Printer Queue.
IBM also denied that they made excessive use of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms). Anyone who ever dealt with midrange machines will be rolling on the floor laughing at that one....
those of us schooled in RPG can only think of SPOOL with that meaning! - the AS/400 was a wonderful design - especially single level storage - also amazing reliability (we had one 1 running 24/7 for over 4 years with 0 downtime, in a broom cupboard in a victorian building with zero air filtration, temperature monitoring or anything).
Dell outlet - there is a 10% voucher on twitter at the moment. Minimum 8gb RAM / 16gb is better but trade for bigger SSD (NVMe preferably) and at least 256gb SSD Screen resolution you want at least 1920 x 1080 as anything worse is unusable nowadays.
after that its a combination of swapping price for weight (less is more).
++
Dell Outlet is the first place to look. You can typically save ~30% on the list price (with vouchers and free delivery offers) for a computer that in most cases is only a few weeks to a couple of months old. I've bought from there many times, and usually these second-hand computers are mint, and they have a full warranty anyway.
My sister bought a laptop with a 1080p IPS screen, Kaby Lake, 8GB, 256 GB SSD for about £350 a couple of months ago.
Perhaps the easiest solution will be the reunification of Ireland.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
Except the DUP will never agree, nor will the Conservative and Unionist Party and Unionists still make up a majority of the Northern Ireland population and Protestants are still the largest religious group in the province and the 2 most populous counties of Antrim and Down
Brexit has/will make unification at least thinkable, in a way that it hasn't been heretofore. Indeed there is a credible argument that it makes it very likely, sooner or later.
But is it really plausible to imagine Keir Starmer, Vince Cable and Jacob Rees-Mogg going through the same lobby to defeat the government - with the knowledge that the result would be the diametric opposite of what the non-Brexiteers want, and with the electoral risk that the opposition parties would get a large part of the flak for the ensuing chaos?
If it comes to that Corbyn just doesn't have the balls to finish the government off in those circumstances.
He might do - but he'd have to carry his parliamentary party, as well as MPs from other parties, including the SNP, with him.
The argument would be that to vote against the government would succeed in bringing the government down (which it wouldn't necessarily, thanks to the FTPA), but it wouldn't cause a no-deal Brexit because a new Corbyn government would win an Article 50 extension from the EU and then be able to negotiate the mother of all deals.
I think there are several steps of wishful, or indeed magical, thinking in this, but that doesn't mean that MPs won't go along with it if it enables them to vote against May and her unloved compromise.
Perhaps the easiest solution will be the reunification of Ireland.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
Except the DUP will never agree, nor will the Conservative and Unionist Party and Unionists still make up a majority of the Northern Ireland population and Protestants are still the largest religious group in the province and the 2 most populous counties of Antrim and Down
Brexit has/will make unification at least thinkable, in a way that it hasn't been heretofore. Indeed there is a credible argument that it makes it very likely, sooner or later.
No it doesn't really.
Like Scotland Brexit has really made no difference either way to whether Scotland or Northern Ireland leave the UK. In Scotland Unionist parties won a majority of the popular vote at the 2017 general election and the SNP lost over a third of their seats after the Brexit vote and the DUP win most seats and votes at both the 2017 general election and Assembly election.
What may cause Scotland to leave the UK is if Westminster fails to ultimately give Holyrood the devomax most Scots want and what may cause Northern Ireland to leave the UK is if Catholics become the largest religious group as they are majority nationalist while Protestants are majority Unionist (or at least the most Catholic counties like Fermanagh and Derry and Armagh and Tyrone may leave the UK and join the Republic of Ireland)
As always, you are the chicken focused only on the single piece of grain immediately in front of its beak.
But even if a fudge is on from Europe's side, it's not really on from Britain's. Political numbers mean that it's something like Chequers or nothing. And as nothing isn't worth talking about, that's why people are 'just carrying on', as you rightly put it.
TBF this hoary old canard, that we can simply "go over the commision's head" to the Council is one of those Brexiteer fantasies I assumed had gone down in flames 12 months ago.
The commission is negotiating withing the parameters given to it *by* the council. We're not going to go over the commission's head, because the commission is implementing the council's line. French, German, Irish government members all publicly reiterated their commitment to the commission's strategy only last week.
Also bear in mind that any deal would need the approval of the European parliament, and that's currently in even more of a mood to give the UK a kicking than the commission is.
In the very, very unlikely event the UK is able to drive a wedge between the council and commission, it's nailed on the European parliament will side with the commission.
Not to mention we would also have to go over their heads and appeal directly to the EU Parliament - or is their support for any deal a given as well?
The EU parliament is likely to be even fussier.
Still plenty of tinned beans in Tesco. I might start reporting stock levels as a PB service
IBM Midrange machines like the S/36 and AS/400 used SPOOL as an acronym for Simultaneous Peripheral Output OnLine a.k.a. The Printer Queue.
IBM also denied that they made excessive use of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms). Anyone who ever dealt with midrange machines will be rolling on the floor laughing at that one....
those of us schooled in RPG can only think of SPOOL with that meaning! - the AS/400 was a wonderful design - especially single level storage - also amazing reliability (we had one 1 running 24/7 for over 4 years with 0 downtime, in a broom cupboard in a victorian building with zero air filtration, temperature monitoring or anything).
Not to mention that a machine designed in the early 1980s (Silverlake project) runs as a VM, everything is an object (and therefore queryable), integrated database and 128bit virtual processor design.
No wonder it is bombproof. I knew of AS/400s running 30 year old software written on System/34s in the late 1970s. For businesses that needed continuity and stability, they were unmatched.
Not to mention we would also have to go over their heads and appeal directly to the EU Parliament - or is their support for any deal a given as well?
The EU parliament is likely to be even fussier.
Still plenty of tinned beans in Tesco. I might start reporting stock levels as a PB service
The European Parliament has had to put up with the UK's theatrics (via UKIP) for a long time. They are just gagging for a chance to return the favour.
By next year Bannon is aiming for Nationalists ie Lega Nord, Front National, AfD, Swedish Democrats, Law and Justice etc to be the largest block in the European Parliament
There won't be a deal - Cabinet can't agree what we want, Parliament didn't pass it, Barnier can't accept it, and should all 3 of those hoops pass it'll get vetoed by the Irish/French. This shouldn't be news - its be clear there wouldn't be a deal for a while.
The game changer will be in September, as the endless summer starts to cool off and people go back to work, and the government releases details of what no deal crash brexit means in practice. Yes, the hard core loons will insist its all project fear, but most people will read Protect and Survive 2018 and think "I didn't vote for this".
Politicians keep going on about a late deal, as if the EU will cave at the last. The only late deal will be the UK begging for an extension and Barnier making us dance for it.
No wonder it is bombproof. I knew of AS/400s running software written on System/34s in the late 1970s. For businesses that needed continuity and stability, they were unmatched.
On a related point, the dirty secret of CRM software is that trained users are *always* faster with old fashioned green-screen terminals than with modern graphical interfaces.
Perhaps the easiest solution will be the reunification of Ireland.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
Except the DUP will never agree, nor will the Conservative and Unionist Party and Unionists still make up a majority of the Northern Ireland population and Protestants are still the largest religious group in the province and the 2 most populous counties of Antrim and Down
Brexit has/will make unification at least thinkable, in a way that it hasn't been heretofore. Indeed there is a credible argument that it makes it very likely, sooner or later.
No it doesn't really.
Like Scotland Brexit has really made no difference either way to whether Scotland or Northern Ireland leave the UK. In Scotland Unionist parties won a majority of the popular vote at the 2017 general election and the SNP lost over a third of their seats after the Brexit vote and the DUP win most seats and votes at both the 2017 general election and Assembly election.
What may cause Scotland to leave the UK is if Westminster fails to ultimately give Holyrood the devomax most Scots want and what may cause Northern Ireland to leave the UK is if Catholics become the largest religious group as they are majority nationalist while Protestants are majority Unionist (or at least the most Catholic counties like Fermanagh and Derry and Armagh and Tyrone may leave the UK and join the Republic of Ireland)
As always, you are the chicken focused only on the single piece of grain immediately in front of its beak.
A majority of Catholics support Northern Ireland rejoining the Republic in the event of hard Brexit and a hard border while a majority of Protestants want Northern Ireland to remain in the UK even with a hard Brexit and hard border so again Brexit has made little difference either way
Perhaps the easiest solution will be the reunification of Ireland.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
Except the DUP will never agree, nor will the Conservative and Unionist Party and Unionists still make up a majority of the Northern Ireland population and Protestants are still the largest religious group in the province and the 2 most populous counties of Antrim and Down
Brexit has/will make unification at least thinkable, in a way that it hasn't been heretofore. Indeed there is a credible argument that it makes it very likely, sooner or later.
No wonder it is bombproof. I knew of AS/400s running software written on System/34s in the late 1970s. For businesses that needed continuity and stability, they were unmatched.
On a related point, the dirty secret of CRM software is that trained users are *always* faster with old fashioned green-screen terminals than with modern graphical interfaces.
Modern GUIs are wonderful in many ways, but entry speed is not one of them.
I generally use keyboard shortcuts wherever I can and I prefer to scroll with the cursor keys and page keys rather than the mouse. My carpal tunnels have been sufficiently hammered by mouse use already.
Perhaps the easiest solution will be the reunification of Ireland.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
Except the DUP will never agree, nor will the Conservative and Unionist Party and Unionists still make up a majority of the Northern Ireland population and Protestants are still the largest religious group in the province and the 2 most populous counties of Antrim and Down
Brexit has/will make unification at least thinkable, in a way that it hasn't been heretofore. Indeed there is a credible argument that it makes it very likely, sooner or later.
Perhaps the easiest solution will be the reunification of Ireland.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
Except the DUP will never agree, nor will the Conservative and Unionist Party and Unionists still make up a majority of the Northern Ireland population and Protestants are still the largest religious group in the province and the 2 most populous counties of Antrim and Down
Brexit has/will make unification at least thinkable, in a way that it hasn't been heretofore. Indeed there is a credible argument that it makes it very likely, sooner or later.
Perhaps the easiest solution will be the reunification of Ireland.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
Except the DUP will never agree, nor will the Conservative and Unionist Party and Unionists still make up a majority of the Northern Ireland population and Protestants are still the largest religious group in the province and the 2 most populous counties of Antrim and Down
Brexit has/will make unification at least thinkable, in a way that it hasn't been heretofore. Indeed there is a credible argument that it makes it very likely, sooner or later.
No wonder it is bombproof. I knew of AS/400s running software written on System/34s in the late 1970s. For businesses that needed continuity and stability, they were unmatched.
On a related point, the dirty secret of CRM software is that trained users are *always* faster with old fashioned green-screen terminals than with modern graphical interfaces.
Which is why one of our customers was Microsoft UK who were one of the largest users of AS/400s in the country - The only book that has a quote from me on the back was a history of the AS/400 - so probably a bit of a fanboi!
Not at all. When you negotiate you need to know what your end game is and what you want. They seem to have as little idea as us. How do they want to trade with the U.K. after we leave? It’s an important question and watching the U.K. government flannel about may be amusing but it is no answer. They should be making constructive proposals which meet their objectives and criteria. They have completely failed to do so.
I disagree. They identified and ruthlessly pursued their objective of dissuading any other country to contemplate leaving.
If the EU is so self-evidently a good thing, why should it be necessary to humiliate a former member to achieve that? Seeking humiliation is usually a sign of a lack of confidence rather than of an organisation confident in its own values and benefits and attractiveness.
I see no evidence of the EU seeking to humiliate us, not least because they want a deal. We humiliate ourselves.
The EU's objectives are to preserve the value of membership, to ensure the unavoidable damage caused by Brexit as much possible falls on our side and not theirs and finally to exploit any opportunities that come from our disengagement. All these are legitimate objectives from their PoV.
It's too early to say whether the EU will be successful in its negotiations. If there's a deal it will probably be on its terms. Ultimately a deal looks likely. We don't have much choice but to accept what's offered. Again if it's not what we want, that's our fault, not theirs.
re is there life after brexit?, facebook seems to think so..
Facebook said on Monday it would double its presence in London, acquiring nearly 600,000 square feet (56,000 square meters) of office space across two buildings in King’s Cross - enough for more than 6,000 workstations.
Some Leavers may have felt that the EU’s path to one state would effectively have led to the abolition of the nation state. You can see that in the concept of EU citizenship & no discrimination between EU citizens which, as far as Britain was concerned, meant that it had to give the same welfare benefits to someone who has just arrived as to a British citizen living here for decades. In short a British citizen had no special claim on his/her government/state than anyone else. You might think that fine but it does rather lead to a very different idea of the nation state.
I do think that the time of the Nation State is drawing to an end. Whilst they were fine and dandy for improving living conditions and public health and education they did also cause a lot of grief (just look at history). I like to think that humanity has reached the point where cooperation and pooling resources (and sovereignty) is now the way forward.
Or take law. In most of the EU there is civil law, no trial by jury, no concept of reasonable doubt or burden of proof or rules against the use of hearsay evidence. If you are going to have ever closer union & one effective state which law will be used in an EU-wide criminal law system? Would you be happy with the abolition of trial by jury or the burden of proof?
The EU is lawless? Or just different? In the UK, less than 1% of trials have a jury. We do, of course, have civil law and a different approach to law in general.
I used to be a rather lukewarm Leaver (pre-referendum). Having seen the shambles both main parties have become, I have little faith in our current system.
Quite frankly, the whole thing is heartbreaking
I agree with your last sentence. I don’t agree that the era of the nation-state is coming to an end. Co-operation, close co-operation: absolutely. But the ability to vote on who makes our laws and to vote them out is essential, more essential than ever. I think the abolition of the nation-state risks abolishing the conditions which make democracy possible. Law is fundamental to a nation’s sense of itself, far more than you seem to think. The EU has a very different concept of law and it is not one I particularly admire. More to the point, the English common law is something worthwhile and something I very much want to keep. I am not at all certain that in the one state where the European project seems to be heading that would happen.
But some form of close association should have been - and should now be - possible. As you say, the lunatics on both sides are making it impossible. It is very sad.
There won't be a deal - Cabinet can't agree what we want, Parliament didn't pass it, Barnier can't accept it, and should all 3 of those hoops pass it'll get vetoed by the Irish/French. This shouldn't be news - its be clear there wouldn't be a deal for a while.
The game changer will be in September, as the endless summer starts to cool off and people go back to work, and the government releases details of what no deal crash brexit means in practice. Yes, the hard core loons will insist its all project fear, but most people will read Protect and Survive 2018 and think "I didn't vote for this".
Politicians keep going on about a late deal, as if the EU will cave at the last. The only late deal will be the UK begging for an extension and Barnier making us dance for it.
Do you understand that no deal will be as big a difficulty for large parts of Europe as it will be for us. You speak as if Barnier would have won if there is a no-deal. He will have failed completely.
I can just about see the Conservative Party activists and sufficient number of MPs backing the Chequers arrangement, deeply unpopular as it already is, as the essential foundation for a Brexit deal. But any material additional concessions during the weeks of ‘negotiations’ would surely be the proverbial straw. Even in deepest Remainville here, enough of the troops are in mutinous mode.
As it is inconceivable that the EU won’t demand these, at this point I honestly can’t envisage any other option than the U.K. departing without agreement. But as I’m in that camp despite my Remain vote in 2016, maybe I’m projecting my own preferences as the outcome. Brexit is driving us all a little bonkers.
It's too early to say whether the EU will be successful in its negotiations. If there's a deal it will probably be on its terms. Ultimately a deal looks likely. We don't have much choice but to accept what's offered. Again if it's not what we want, that's our fault, not theirs.
Come October, with no deal on the horizon, the EU will offer us EEA+CU, take it or leave it. May will walk away at this point, triggering the greatest national crisis since Suez.
On topic, a generally good piece from Nick but I disagree with his prediction that a last-minute deal will sort the issue, which I think is born of the 'this is how Brussels works' mentality that Brexit was a revolt against. That kind of business-as-usual approach will be rejected if it produced an outcome-as-usual - i.e. the fudge he predicts.
You may be right, but I think May is a match for the EU in the fudge department - she has repeatedly proved that she's willing to shade meaning one way or another, depending on who she's talking to. To be fair I'm not sure she has much choice.
You're predicting a sizable revolt if the outcome is indeed fudge, but that will run into a popular wave of sentiment to get the damn thing over with. I think that people who vote against the deal run a real risk of resentment if they succeed (loud opposition to this and that without the expectation of succeeding is something else) - if Parliament actually rejects whatever deal May comes up with and we're back to haggling and emergency arrangements in April, I doubt if it will be Theresa who is the target of popular fury.
Cheers Nick. I agree with your first paragraph. may is to a large extent a prisoner of circumstances.
For that matter, I pretty much agree with your second. However, where I disagree is in your inference that a deal, even a fudged one, will close the issue down.
I fully agree that for much of the country, there's a great desire to 'sort Brexit' and move on. However, I think that even for many of them, there's an expectation that Brexit is sorted rather than left in a limbo - partly because they know that a limbo outcome won't shut up the passionate but also because they might well feel that a fudge isn't 'sorting Brexit'. "Now win the peace" was fine as a slogan in July 1945, when Germany had been defeated and Japan was close to breaking. It wouldn't have worked in 1944, never mind 1943: there was a war to win first.
Now, you might well be right that the target of popular fury isn't May (though given the meh response to Chequers, the risk is not so much widespread hatred as universal derision) but that won't necessarily stop the committed on either side on an issue that quite a lot see as identity-defining and even more see as critical. And I don't think it will be possible to come out of this without anger somewhere, against someone.
But having said all that, any deal that comes with substantial CJEU oversight (beyond specific programs Britain opts back in to), with FoM, or with large ongoing and indefinite payments is going to be rejected.
It's too early to say whether the EU will be successful in its negotiations. If there's a deal it will probably be on its terms. Ultimately a deal looks likely. We don't have much choice but to accept what's offered. Again if it's not what we want, that's our fault, not theirs.
Come October, with no deal on the horizon, the EU will offer us EEA+CU, take it or leave it. May will walk away at this point, triggering the greatest national crisis since Suez.
No they will offer us a transition deal, trading agreement to be negotiated during the transition period
I agree with your last sentence. I don’t agree that the era of the nation-state is coming to an end. Co-operation, close co-operation: absolutely. But the ability to vote on who makes our laws and to vote them out is essential, more essential than ever. I think the abolition of the nation-state risks abolishing the conditions which make democracy possible. Law is fundamental to a nation’s sense of itself, far more than you seem to think. The EU has a very different concept of law and it is not one I particularly admire. More to the point, the English common law is something worthwhile and something I very much want to keep. I am not at all certain that in the one state where the European project seems to be heading that would happen.
Europhiles and their kindred think abolishing the nation state will make us all like Sweden. I suspect we would end up with something more like China. There's damn little evidence that the EU puts the wishes of the people ahead of the goals of the project.
re is there life after brexit?, facebook seems to think so..
Facebook said on Monday it would double its presence in London, acquiring nearly 600,000 square feet (56,000 square meters) of office space across two buildings in King’s Cross - enough for more than 6,000 workstations.
On the customs border thing, maybe the minds of pb.com can help my confusion. The problem seems to be:
1 - If we leave the Single Market and Customs Union, we will need a customs border with the EU. This seems unavoidable - the former means we won't have similar regulations governing what things are and their treatment; the latter that we'll have different customs rates. Given WTO rules, abandoning all customs checks by stating we won't put any tariffs on them means that: a - We won't have any right to put tariffs on anyone else's stuff, either, thanks to MFN rules b - If the EU were to follow suit, they also will give up the right to put tariffs on anything else from anyone else. This is therefore not going to happen.
2 - This necessitates a border, with checks. Technology can help, but won't plausibly remove the need in any short-term timescale.
3 - The Good Friday Agreement in Ireland means there must not be such a border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
All of this taken together seems to imply that either: 1 - We break the Good Friday Agreement 2 - We accept that NI has a different status to the rest of the UK and put the border between NI and the mainland 3 - We stay in the SM and CU after all.
It doesn't seem down to intransigence by anyone, but simply that we simultaneously need a border between NI and the Republic of Ireland and yet cannot have one.
What am I missing?
There isn't actually anything specific in the GFA that rules out a hard border.
However, in practice, neither London nor Dublin will be keen to erect hardware and time may resolve the initial anomaly should a more comprehensive EU-UK deal be signed.
I don’t agree that the era of the nation-state is coming to an end. Co-operation, close co-operation: absolutely. But the ability to vote on who makes our laws and to vote them out is essential, more essential than ever. I think the abolition of the nation-state risks abolishing the conditions which make democracy possible.
I can accept that, but that merely feeds a position that I U-turned on shortly after the referendum - namely, maybe "More Europe" is the only way left. Full Federalism. Before the vote I would have said (in my best Ulster accent) "Never! Never! Never!".
I grew up in a divided society were people killed each other and were carbombs were part of the everyday normality and you were taught to vilify and hate "them" on the "other side".
The EU worked as a mechanism to allow two sovereign countries to pretend no border existed and that there was no threat of being subsumed or divided one way or the other.
Not at all. When you negotiate you need to know what your end game is and what you want. They seem to have as little idea as us. How do they want to trade with the U.K. after we leave? It’s an important question and watching the U.K. government flannel about may be amusing but it is no answer. They should be making constructive proposals which meet their objectives and criteria. They have completely failed to do so.
I disagree. They identified and ruthlessly pursued their objective of dissuading any other country to contemplate leaving.
If the EU is so self-evidently a good thing, why should it be necessary to humiliate a former member to achieve that? Seeking humiliation is usually a sign of a lack of confidence rather than of an organisation confident in its own values and benefits and attractiveness.
I see no evidence of the EU seeking to humiliate us, not least because they want a deal. We humiliate ourselves.
The EU's objectives are to preserve the value of membership, to ensure the unavoidable damage caused by Brexit as much possible falls on our side and not theirs and finally to exploit any opportunities that come from our disengagement. All these are legitimate objectives from their PoV.
It's too early to say whether the EU will be successful in its negotiations. If there's a deal it will probably be on its terms. Ultimately a deal looks likely. We don't have much choice but to accept what's offered. Again if it's not what we want, that's our fault, not theirs.
Out objectives should be to obtain the value of not being members, to seek to mitigate the damage caused and to exploit the opportunities that come from our disengagement. All legitimate objectives from our PoV.
And yet it is notable how the EU seems very keen to tie us into the obligations of membership and to prevent us from exploiting the opportunities that come from disengagement. In part it is because we want to cherry pick. But so do they. Both sides are making a mess of this and, on topic, the neuralgic headaches this will cause on both sides of the Channel - but especially here - will long endure after the next GE.
But the ability to vote on who makes our laws and to vote them out is essential, more essential than ever. I think the abolition of the nation-state risks abolishing the conditions which make democracy possible.
Suppose that an EU Treasury is created, and the post of a directly-elected Chancellor to go with it. Could that be democratic?
If the EPP put up a German Conservative as their candidate, and the S&D put up an Italian Socialist as their candidate do we think that voting in Italy and Germany would mainly break along national or ideological lines?
Comments
Since the last two general elections were characterised by cheating and corruption, I think it is fair to say that this Conservative government has no legitimacy anyway. And neither does Cameron`s stupid Referendum.
A great start to nirvana !
But if by "cause all this" you mean create the things Brexiteers complain about, then no. Lisbon weakened the Commission. Leavers' problems come from Maastricht (Major) and the Single European Act (Thatcher) and perhaps even joining in the first place -- all down to pro-European Conservative governments.
I do think that the time of the Nation State is drawing to an end. Whilst they were fine and dandy for improving living conditions and public health and education they did also cause a lot of grief (just look at history). I like to think that humanity has reached the point where cooperation and pooling resources (and sovereignty) is now the way forward.
The EU is lawless? Or just different? In the UK, less than 1% of trials have a jury. We do, of course, have civil law and a different approach to law in general.
I used to be a rather lukewarm Leaver (pre-referendum). Having seen the shambles both main parties have become, I have little faith in our current system.
Quite frankly, the whole thing is heartbreaking
Why do so many Brexiteers think being the only country in the World without trade deals is anything other than a catastrophe?
This reduces your option set to: Break the Good Friday Agreement or stay in the SM+CU. (There is a third option whereby Ireland also leaves the EU to join a British Single Market and Customs Union, but I think we can discount that option for now).
The former option is the default option. The latter option does have the merit of satisfying the letter of the [advisory] referendum, as well as freeing us from the CAP, CFP and the political union, but it gives us less control over our laws and does not allow us the immigration control that was so central to the referendum campaign.
There has been little to no attempt to prepare the ground for SM+CU as an acceptable compromise between the 52% and the 48%, and, with the present leaderships in the Commons I doubt it would pass even were May to survive to attempt to propose it.
We therefore crash out.
We can debate whether the economic crash is "better or worse" than the democratic crash.
EDIT: And we can resolve both by voting.
If this is not done then it is:
1. No deal
2. Another GE where I cannot see the leadership of either main party will change their positions. The arithmetic may.
3. Another vote which could have a new result including maintaining status quo.
If you have evidence of widespread electoral corruption, you should take it to the police.
Off topic, thanks again for laptop advice. Grabcocque, is the security of fingerprints you mentioned on laptops the same for smart phones? I never activated my phone's fingerprint security for fear of the cloud storing it!
IBM also denied that they made excessive use of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms). Anyone who ever dealt with midrange machines will be rolling on the floor laughing at that one....
If the argument is that it is implicit that there is no hard border between North and South, then it must also be implicit that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
The unmnetioned option to resolve any confusion is another election.....
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/TLA.html
ˈskjuːə(ʊ)mɔːf/
noun: skeuomorph; plural noun: skeuomorphs
An object or feature which imitates the design of a similar artefact made from another material.
"the pottery box with a square lid is a skeuomorph of a twilled basketry container"
Computing
An element of a graphical user interface which mimics a physical object.
"Note-taking apps offer skeuomorphs of yellow legal pads, squared paper, ring binders, etc."
How we all learn on PB. Should PB be given a grant from the Dept of Education?
I also like Cyclefree's take on this.
The counter-argument is that this is all very highfalutin' and hypothetical, rather than grounded in hard and practical realities. Where's the accounting? But in a once-in-a-lifetime referendum, where you are thinking about impacts ripple out on a 20 or 30-year timescale, it's hard to avoid hypotheticals. Also for good or ill, longer term it is hard to have great faith in quantitative forecasts - just look at those error bars! - whereas principals, concepts, sentimentality and subjectivity remain as guiding-posts.
You can see that by thinking through whatever objections you have to Britain joining the USA. Had it done so in the 1960s there can be little doubt that the "accounting" side of the argument would be favourable - look at GDP/capita and compare it to other US states, and it seems overwhelmingly likely convergence would have made us rather richer. For most people the strongest, gut-visceral reasons against doing so involve values, identity, an emotional attachment to a certain vision of their country... if the dollar-denominated numbers point in another direction, should these things have been written off?
From my experience, most ardent Brexiteers can at least grasp, even if they fundamentally disagree with, those ardent eurofederalists whose dreams were shattered on referendum night. They saw British values, culture and identity as inseparably European, and saw a future that belonged in tight-knit political harmony with her neighbours.
The kind of Remainer that Brexiteers seem to find more troublesome is the "I dislike and distrust the institutions of the EU just as much as you do, but at least if we're on the inside we can reform them to our liking" brigade. "After all, we can veto any changes that take the EU in a direction we're uncomfortable with. And the EU is just as likely to give powers back as it is to take new ones. The countries of the eurozone may seek deeper integration, but that doesn't mean their fundamental interests will at some point diverge from us and we'll find ourselves outvoted on the fringes. Sweden and Denmark will support us, and there'll be a few smaller states on the east of Europe, at least until they adopt the euro as well..."
An interesting observation both Brexiteers and that category of Remainer see themselves as the "realist". And the other as naive, simplistic, even deluded.
Does that not also mean it is too early to say whether our membership is a success or not?
And, yes, given the parity between the two communities that is also established in the GFA, then the same argument applies to a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain [but this isn't an argument that the DUP et al want to make because they argue it is acceptable to impose the border between the 6 counties and the 26.
If Ireland will accept no change to the border as it is now, which is their position then the only solution is FULL SM membership (not partial with EEA) and CU.
So the only solution acceptable to the EU is the UK not leaving or the UK having a special deal where the only part of the EU we leave is the Parliament and our Commissioner.
Any other deal is dependent on the Irish accepting a degree of friction in the customs process.
That's a very good question. Maybe, maybe not.
If we gift Northern Ireland to the Republic, then rUK can adopt CETA+.
Job done.
I think you mean the Conservative politicians who make up Mrs May`s failing government cannot agree, Mr Edmund. I think the British people are coming to agree that the best solution is to remain in the EU. There is no appetite for a collapse of the British economy, leading to social disorder and the introduction of a state of emergency, eventually to a May Dictatorship. Likewise there is no appetite for a Corbyn Socialist dictatorship, arising out of the same circumstances.
Since the last two general elections were characterised by cheating and corruption, I think it is fair to say that this Conservative government has no legitimacy anyway. And neither does Cameron`s stupid Referendum.
I feel your pain but your post is written from wanting to remain, notwithstanding the referendum.
The reason we are where we are is not Cameron's stupid referendum as you call it, but the fact remain failed to make a positive case for the EU other than trying to frighten us to stay in.
I hope TM middle way will result in agreement but if the EU, and the Commission especially, continue to reject our overtures I fear there will be a rapid change of mood against the EU and a hard Brexit will become a very real possibility.
I am opposed to such a Brexit unless a clear path to plan and mitigate the damage is promoted by TM and the cabinet.
A few weeks ago I thought a second referendum would vote remain but day by day I see that becoming more and more unlikely no matter the damage to both sides
Remain has damaged itself just as much as leave.
Both are responsible for the situation, neither has the moral high ground
It's well known that the UK holds the cards in this process, Michael Gove himself said so.
Dell outlet - there is a 10% voucher on twitter at the moment.
Minimum 8gb RAM / 16gb is better but trade for bigger SSD (NVMe preferably)
and at least 256gb SSD
Screen resolution you want at least 1920 x 1080 as anything worse is unusable nowadays.
after that its a combination of swapping price for weight (less is more).
https://twitter.com/benton_dan/status/1021321701194428417
When looking at responsibility for events, it is customary for those who had the most freedom to do (or not do) actions that led to those events to be seen as holding the most responsibility. We will have chosen the course of action that led to that border; they will have been compelled by out actions and the rules they've signed up to with the WTO. And we will have known that before we did it.
I think not even Pontius Pilate would be able to wash that off.
For that to happen, the Brexit ultras - who actively want chaos, it seeems - will have to ally themselves with MPs from other parties who overwhelmingly oppose leaving without a deal. Is that going to happen? Obviously from a purely party-political point of view, opposition parties might be tempted to cause as much damage as possible in the hope of picking up power from the resultant carnage. But is it really plausible to imagine Keir Starmer, Vince Cable and Jacob Rees-Mogg going through the same lobby to defeat the government - with the knowledge that the result would be the diametric opposite of what the non-Brexiteers want, and with the electoral risk that the opposition parties would get a large part of the flak for the ensuing chaos?
Anything is possible in this febrile environment, but the scenario of any deal being rejected by such an unnatural alliance does look rather implausible.. Perhaps instead we'll see abstentions by opposition parties, as an expression of the fact that whilst they don't like this deal, they like No Deal even less.
It takes time and effort to change opinions and HMG is currently arguing the contrary case.
When and where is this supposed change of public opinion going to come from?
Putting aside what we've learned from the Brexit negotiations themselves, how much more do we know in 2018? The migration crisis now seems to have settled down. The euro crisis is no longer burning red-hot, though could easily blow up again (and potentially worse, this time round, re Italy). The economic difficulties of the European south remain largely unresolved. We are now pretty sure that Turkish entry to the EU is out - in 2016 the balance of probabilities already strongly suggested that, but it would have been a serious game-changer had it gone ahead and at the same time senior politicians were still talking up and encouraging their bid. (But a disclaimer, if we were to fast-forward ten years: note how quickly Spain, Portugal and Greece transitioned from dictatorship to Europe. Even now we probably can't write off Turkey as permanently out.) What about the rise of political extremism across Europe? Its progress remains patchy, but troubling. Any major changes to the EU's fundamental direction? Apparently not. Serious talk about a European treasury, but no concrete steps.
If the referendum had taken place in 2021 rather than 2016, no doubt it would have been influenced by the crises or events de jour. But also a few more pieces of the jigsaw about the EU's future shape would have slotted in. Still, would it have been much easier to assess the 20 or 30-year impact of one's potential vote? I doubt it, because there would have been fresh uncertainties. If the EU, particularly the Eurozone, was developing a more obviously federal shape that might have pushed some people towards Leave, though demographic shifts could well have favoured Remain.
Like Scotland Brexit has really made no difference either way to whether Scotland or Northern Ireland leave the UK. In Scotland Unionist parties won a majority of the popular vote at the 2017 general election and the SNP lost over a third of their seats after the Brexit vote and the DUP win most seats and votes at both the 2017 general election and Assembly election.
What may cause Scotland to leave the UK is if Westminster fails to ultimately give Holyrood the devomax most Scots want and what may cause Northern Ireland to leave the UK is if Catholics become the largest religious group as they are majority nationalist while Protestants are majority Unionist (or at least the most Catholic counties like Fermanagh and Derry and Armagh and Tyrone may leave the UK and join the Republic of Ireland)
Dell Outlet is the first place to look. You can typically save ~30% on the list price (with vouchers and free delivery offers) for a computer that in most cases is only a few weeks to a couple of months old. I've bought from there many times, and usually these second-hand computers are mint, and they have a full warranty anyway.
My sister bought a laptop with a 1080p IPS screen, Kaby Lake, 8GB, 256 GB SSD for about £350 a couple of months ago.
https://twitter.com/SiobhanFenton/status/1004996532804968448
I think there are several steps of wishful, or indeed magical, thinking in this, but that doesn't mean that MPs won't go along with it if it enables them to vote against May and her unloved compromise.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/brexit-or-ukexit-twelve-predictions-about-northern-ireland-s-future-1.3457324
Still plenty of tinned beans in Tesco. I might start reporting stock levels as a PB service
Still plenty of tinned beans in Tesco. I might start reporting stock levels as a PB service
The European Parliament has had to put up with the UK's theatrics (via UKIP) for a long time. They are just gagging for a chance to return the favour.
No wonder it is bombproof. I knew of AS/400s running 30 year old software written on System/34s in the late 1970s. For businesses that needed continuity and stability, they were unmatched.
By next year Bannon is aiming for Nationalists ie Lega Nord, Front National, AfD, Swedish Democrats, Law and Justice etc to be the largest block in the European Parliament
The game changer will be in September, as the endless summer starts to cool off and people go back to work, and the government releases details of what no deal crash brexit means in practice. Yes, the hard core loons will insist its all project fear, but most people will read Protect and Survive 2018 and think "I didn't vote for this".
Politicians keep going on about a late deal, as if the EU will cave at the last. The only late deal will be the UK begging for an extension and Barnier making us dance for it.
I generally use keyboard shortcuts wherever I can and I prefer to scroll with the cursor keys and page keys rather than the mouse. My carpal tunnels have been sufficiently hammered by mouse use already.
The unidentified woman was found dead near a forest in India after rumours started circulating about child kidnappers in the area."
https://news.sky.com/story/another-woman-lynched-over-whatsapp-rumours-of-child-kidnappers-in-india-11446148
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/did-putin-share-stolen-election-data-with-trump/2018/07/20/50854cc8-8c30-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html
28% of current Tory voters would vote Remain in a second referendum.
The EU's objectives are to preserve the value of membership, to ensure the unavoidable damage caused by Brexit as much possible falls on our side and not theirs and finally to exploit any opportunities that come from our disengagement. All these are legitimate objectives from their PoV.
It's too early to say whether the EU will be successful in its negotiations. If there's a deal it will probably be on its terms. Ultimately a deal looks likely. We don't have much choice but to accept what's offered. Again if it's not what we want, that's our fault, not theirs.
Facebook said on Monday it would double its presence in London, acquiring nearly 600,000 square feet (56,000 square meters) of office space across two buildings in King’s Cross - enough for more than 6,000 workstations.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-britain/facebook-to-double-office-presence-in-london-idUSKBN1KD1CO?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/businessNews+(Business+News)
But some form of close association should have been - and should now be - possible. As you say, the lunatics on both sides are making it impossible. It is very sad.
As it is inconceivable that the EU won’t demand these, at this point I honestly can’t envisage any other option than the U.K. departing without agreement. But as I’m in that camp despite my Remain vote in 2016, maybe I’m projecting my own preferences as the outcome. Brexit is driving us all a little bonkers.
There are also more Labour Leave seats than Tory Remain seats
For that matter, I pretty much agree with your second. However, where I disagree is in your inference that a deal, even a fudged one, will close the issue down.
I fully agree that for much of the country, there's a great desire to 'sort Brexit' and move on. However, I think that even for many of them, there's an expectation that Brexit is sorted rather than left in a limbo - partly because they know that a limbo outcome won't shut up the passionate but also because they might well feel that a fudge isn't 'sorting Brexit'. "Now win the peace" was fine as a slogan in July 1945, when Germany had been defeated and Japan was close to breaking. It wouldn't have worked in 1944, never mind 1943: there was a war to win first.
Now, you might well be right that the target of popular fury isn't May (though given the meh response to Chequers, the risk is not so much widespread hatred as universal derision) but that won't necessarily stop the committed on either side on an issue that quite a lot see as identity-defining and even more see as critical. And I don't think it will be possible to come out of this without anger somewhere, against someone.
But having said all that, any deal that comes with substantial CJEU oversight (beyond specific programs Britain opts back in to), with FoM, or with large ongoing and indefinite payments is going to be rejected.
However, in practice, neither London nor Dublin will be keen to erect hardware and time may resolve the initial anomaly should a more comprehensive EU-UK deal be signed.
I grew up in a divided society were people killed each other and were carbombs were part of the everyday normality and you were taught to vilify and hate "them" on the "other side".
The EU worked as a mechanism to allow two sovereign countries to pretend no border existed and that there was no threat of being subsumed or divided one way or the other.
I cannot forget that. Division is not success.
And yet it is notable how the EU seems very keen to tie us into the obligations of membership and to prevent us from exploiting the opportunities that come from disengagement. In part it is because we want to cherry pick. But so do they. Both sides are making a mess of this and, on topic, the neuralgic headaches this will cause on both sides of the Channel - but especially here - will long endure after the next GE.
If the EPP put up a German Conservative as their candidate, and the S&D put up an Italian Socialist as their candidate do we think that voting in Italy and Germany would mainly break along national or ideological lines?