I think one problem No Dealers have is that they (mostly) rejected the option of staying in the Single Market as not fulfilling the referendum despite it technically fulfilling the text we voted on, because keeping FoM wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for. The reasoning behind this is usually either "because that's not the vision the Leave campaign was selling" or "because that's just what I feel". But the exact same reasoning can be used by Dealers and Remainers to say that No Deal isn't in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for.
Spot on.
If we had compromised on SM+CU a year ago, we'd all be getting on with our lives now. Sadly, such a sensible approach was beyond the hardliners, who obsessed about FoM. This was not on the ballot paper, and no end of bloody word clouds can alter that clear truth.
Yes. We also may as well have remained in the EU.
Can you give me an explanation as to how SM+CU is better than EU membership?
There are costs and benefits to leaving but as far as I can tell SM+CU has costs but no benefits which should patently rule it out as an absurd option.
The benefits (for Leavers) of SM+CU would be: 1. Out of the political institutions and future integration. 2. Out of the Common Agricultural Policy (the largest financial cost). 3. Out of the Common Fisheries Policy. 4. Brexit would happen in a way that wouldn't cause economic dislocation, making it easier to argue for and move to a looser arrangement in future if desired.
Tories used to be good at this sort of salami-slicing tactic. Since when did they become Great Leap Maoists?
I guess Tories hate it because it has nothing to say on immigration and being a rule taker isn’t taking back control. There is less control.
I think one problem No Dealers have is that they (mostly) rejected the option of staying in the Single Market as not fulfilling the referendum despite it technically fulfilling the text we voted on, because keeping FoM wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for. The reasoning behind this is usually either "because that's not the vision the Leave campaign was selling" or "because that's just what I feel". But the exact same reasoning can be used by Dealers and Remainers to say that No Deal isn't in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for.
Spot on.
If we had compromised on SM+CU a year ago, we'd all be getting on with our lives now. Sadly, such a sensible approach was beyond the hardliners, who obsessed about FoM. This was not on the ballot paper, and no end of bloody word clouds can alter that clear truth.
Yes. We also may as well have remained in the EU.
Can you give me an explanation as to how SM+CU is better than EU membership?
There are costs and benefits to leaving but as far as I can tell SM+CU has costs but no benefits which should patently rule it out as an absurd option.
The benefits (for Leavers) of SM+CU would be: 1. Out of the political institutions and future integration. 2. Out of the Common Agricultural Policy (the largest financial cost). 3. Out of the Common Fisheries Policy. 4. Brexit would happen in a way that wouldn't cause economic dislocation, making it easier to argue for and move to a looser arrangement in future if desired.
Tories used to be good at this sort of salami-slicing tactic. Since when did they become Great Leap Maoists?
A woman who has her own radio show/probably a newspaper column or someone trying to take the pi$$ on the internet, it's a hard one.
I have no idea who would 'win' a debate between Bobjob and Brewer, but intellectual capacity =/= ability to self publicise or Felix Kjellberg would be the world's smartest man..
Ah PewDiePie. My daughter is a huge fan. The whole YouTube megastar thing had kind of passed me by until recently but I have started following a few bits of his stuff.
I think one problem No Dealers have is that they (mostly) rejected the option of staying in the Single Market as not fulfilling the referendum despite it technically fulfilling the text we voted on, because keeping FoM wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for. The reasoning behind this is usually either "because that's not the vision the Leave campaign was selling" or "because that's just what I feel". But the exact same reasoning can be used by Dealers and Remainers to say that No Deal isn't in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for.
Spot on.
If we had compromised on SM+CU a year ago, we'd all be getting on with our lives now. Sadly, such a sensible approach was beyond the hardliners, who obsessed about FoM. This was not on the ballot paper, and no end of bloody word clouds can alter that clear truth.
Yes. We also may as well have remained in the EU.
Can you give me an explanation as to how SM+CU is better than EU membership?
There are costs and benefits to leaving but as far as I can tell SM+CU has costs but no benefits which should patently rule it out as an absurd option.
Indeed. Given the choice between this and Remain I would clearly choose Remain. If this really is the choice bring on the 2nd vote and let us meekly change our minds. Indeed why not just revoke.
My guess is that the hardcore Remoaners would soon be pushing for another referendum on just this basis (this is so shit and inferior we might as well rejoin) and they would win.
All these arguments are fine and dandy, but the point is we never determined that the electorate agreed with them in a referendum. So we never democratically ruled out a SM+CU Brexit, instead we ruled it out with arguments like "It's not what Leave campaigned for", "It'd do more harm than good", "I just don't think it's what the electorate meant when they voted Leave". And the point is those same arguments can be used to rule out a No Deal Brexit (given that the second and third points are based on prediction and opinion, which will be different depending on who you ask... and, again, we never asked the electorate).
Agreed. Which is why I amenable to the two stage referendum suggested on here (I forget the author, sorry)
1st stage: do you agree with TMays deal or not: yes or no
2nd stage (if no): do you want Remain or No deal and Leave
That seems to make the democratic best of a horrible job.
What's the reasoning for splitting the stages in that particular way?
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They knew it would be powerful, do some damage, but also end the war: a good thing. But they also thought there was a 10% risk it would ignite the atmosphere, killing the entire world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
No, it really wasn't. The world's best physicists knew that a chain reaction needs a concentrated fissile material. Heck, a great majority of the problem in getting a plutonium bomb to work is how you keep the chain reaction going by not losing too many spare neutrons - and that's in a material that was extremely dense even before being squished further.
Oh - and does an extension really require the approval of Parliament? I mean in legal terms.
It would require amending existing legislation, so regardless of whether asking the EU requires approval, for the extension to happen Parliament has to vote for it.
But that can be done by regulations, can't it, rather than by an Act of Parliament? It wouldn't require the active approval of Parliament, would it?
I thought it would require another piece of Primary legislation to amend, though, these days, it depends on what Bercow says the rules are. And I could be wrong anyway.
I think one problem No Dealers have is that they (mostly) rejected the option of staying in the Single Market as not fulfilling the referendum despite it technically fulfilling the text we voted on, because keeping FoM wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for. The reasoning behind this is usually either "because that's not the vision the Leave campaign was selling" or "because that's just what I feel". But the exact same reasoning can be used by Dealers and Remainers to say that No Deal isn't in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for.
Spot on.
If we had compromised on SM+CU a year ago, we'd all be getting on with our lives now. Sadly, such a sensible approach was beyond the hardliners, who obsessed about FoM. This was not on the ballot paper, and no end of bloody word clouds can alter that clear truth.
Yes. We also may as well have remained in the EU.
Can you give me an explanation as to how SM+CU is better than EU membership?
There are costs and benefits to leaving but as far as I can tell SM+CU has costs but no benefits which should patently rule it out as an absurd option.
The benefits (for Leavers) of SM+CU would be: 1. Out of the political institutions and future integration. 2. Out of the Common Agricultural Policy (the largest financial cost). 3. Out of the Common Fisheries Policy. 4. Brexit would happen in a way that wouldn't cause economic dislocation, making it easier to argue for and move to a looser arrangement in future if desired.
Tories used to be good at this sort of salami-slicing tactic. Since when did they become Great Leap Maoists?
Spot on.
Yep.
The tragedy is that Boris, who lies awake anight imagining himself the nation's Churchill in waiting, missed his only chance to fulfil his ambition: he could have come out after the Referendum and told some hard truths to the ultras on his own side, mapping out a progressive and initially soft Brexit path toward leaving the EU.
Instead he chose to play to the gallery and thereby sunk his own career.
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They knew it would be powerful, do some damage, but also end the war: a good thing. But they also thought there was a 10% risk it would ignite the atmosphere, killing the entire world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
No, it really wasn't. The world's best physicists knew that a chain reaction needs a concentrated fissile material. Heck, a great majority of the problem in getting a plutonium bomb to work is how you keep the chain reaction going by not losing too many spare neutrons - and that's in a material that was extremely dense even before being squished further.
From a quick googling, it sounds like this was raised and treated as a real possibility by Edward Teller, but ruled out by him and others quite quickly.
Agreed. Which is why I amenable to the two stage referendum suggested on here (I forget the author, sorry)
1st stage: do you agree with TMays deal or not: yes or no
2nd stage (if no): do you want Remain or No deal and Leave
That seems to make the democratic best of a horrible job.
I don't think any non-bonkers government would do the "(if no)" part because it encourages Remainers to vote No Deal to get to the second stage. But it works find without it, where the 2nd stage is, "do you want to Remain or do whatever everybody picked in the 1st stage".
That said, looking at the current veto points I don't see how you get No Deal on the ballot.
As I mentioned earlier the meeting between Salvini and Morawiecki in Warsaw yesterday looked very ominous for the EU. Not a lot of compromising language from either of them and threats of a new Anti-EU alliance.
Agreed. Which is why I amenable to the two stage referendum suggested on here (I forget the author, sorry)
1st stage: do you agree with TMays deal or not: yes or no
2nd stage (if no): do you want Remain or No deal and Leave
That seems to make the democratic best of a horrible job.
I don't think any non-bonkers government would do the "(if no)" part because it encourages Remainers to vote No Deal to get to the second stage. But it works find without it, where the 2nd stage is, "do you want to Remain or do whatever everybody picked in the 1st stage".
That said, looking at the current veto points I don't see how you get No Deal on the ballot.
No responsible government will allow no deal onto a ballot. Hence Sean's proposal comes down to the deal v Remain vote that is the only type of further referendum that is ever likely.
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They knew it would be powerful, do some damage, but also end the war: a good thing. But they also thought there was a 10% risk it would ignite the atmosphere, killing the entire world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
No, it really wasn't. The world's best physicists knew that a chain reaction needs a concentrated fissile material. Heck, a great majority of the problem in getting a plutonium bomb to work is how you keep the chain reaction going by not losing too many spare neutrons - and that's in a material that was extremely dense even before being squished further.
From a quick googling, it sounds like this was raised and treated as a real possibility by Edward Teller, but ruled out by him and others quite quickly.
On those kinds of numbers, the idea of asking Parliament to vote again is for the birds. There's no way back for a defeat of that magnitude.
Personally I think it'll be a bit higher, maybe majority of 190 for No.
[There's still around 40 Tory MPs unaccounted for who said they opposed the deal before and voted against May in the VONC. I find it very hard to believe May will have managed to nobble as many as 40 MPs.]
As I mentioned earlier the meeting between Salvini and Morawiecki in Warsaw yesterday looked very ominous for the EU. Not a lot of compromising language from either of them and threats of a new Anti-EU alliance.
Oh - and does an extension really require the approval of Parliament? I mean in legal terms.
It would require amending existing legislation, so regardless of whether asking the EU requires approval, for the extension to happen Parliament has to vote for it.
But that can be done by regulations, can't it, rather than by an Act of Parliament? It wouldn't require the active approval of Parliament, would it?
That's right. Implementing an extention of A50 into UK law can be done by regulations under the Withdrawal Act section 20(4).
I think one problem No Dealers have is that they (mostly) rejected the option of staying in the Single Market as not fulfilling the referendum despite it technically fulfilling the text we voted on, because keeping FoM wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for. The reasoning behind this is usually either "because that's not the vision the Leave campaign was selling" or "because that's just what I feel". But the exact same reasoning can be used by Dealers and Remainers to say that No Deal isn't in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for.
Spot on.
If we had compromised on SM+CU a year ago, we'd all be getting on with our lives now. Sadly, such a sensible approach was beyond the hardliners, who obsessed about FoM. This was not on the ballot paper, and no end of bloody word clouds can alter that clear truth.
Yes. We also may as well have remained in the EU.
Can you give me an explanation as to how SM+CU is better than EU membership?
There are costs and benefits to leaving but as far as I can tell SM+CU has costs but no benefits which should patently rule it out as an absurd option.
The benefits (for Leavers) of SM+CU would be: 1. Out of the political institutions and future integration. 2. Out of the Common Agricultural Policy (the largest financial cost). 3. Out of the Common Fisheries Policy. 4. Brexit would happen in a way that wouldn't cause economic dislocation, making it easier to argue for and move to a looser arrangement in future if desired.
Tories used to be good at this sort of salami-slicing tactic. Since when did they become Great Leap Maoists?
I guess Tories hate it because it has nothing to say on immigration and being a rule taker isn’t taking back control. There is less control.
Yes, those are valid criticisms, but the question was what the benefits would be, and I think that there's a reasonable list of benefits to make it a viable option when considering the various tradeoffs.
I think a citizens assembly would have been a good way to examine the various tradeoffs and perhaps there's still time for that early in the transition if we do exit with the withdrawal agreement.
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
Do you think May will take it off the table next week? It'll infuriate the Brexit Buccaneers, but since she knows they have no power to stop her, I think it'd be a good show of faith to Parliament, the EU and the country.
Again we come back to how though?
She cannot take it off the table unless she gets Parliament to endorse an alternative. Because if we do not have an agreement by 29th March, No Deal happens whether we want it or not.
The betting markets completely disagree with that. The last time I looked, the implied probability of Parliament endorsing an agreement by 29 March was about 1/3, and the implied probability of our leaving on 29 March was also about 1/3.
The betting markets believe that if we do not have an agreement by 29 March, then Brexit won't happen on schedule.
Well they are wrong. There has to be a majority in Parliament for something to happen before then or No Deal is the default option. Even obtaining an extension requires Parliament to actually agree something.
Does it? What's to stop her/the executive just asking Brussels for one? The WA I get, but an extension?
Sorry Topping I was not clear. What I was referring to was that the EU have already made it clear they will not just grant an extension for no reason. Unless May can show that there is a real change in prospect, rather than more of the same internal wrangling they have said they would not consider an extension.
As I said a couple of weeks ago the EU have played the whole negotiations with a pretty straight bat and I see no reason to doubt them on this particular instance.
Ah yes well that makes sense. If there is an extension then it will be for a deal vs remain referendum.
Oh - and does an extension really require the approval of Parliament? I mean in legal terms.
It would require amending existing legislation, so regardless of whether asking the EU requires approval, for the extension to happen Parliament has to vote for it.
But that can be done by regulations, can't it, rather than by an Act of Parliament? It wouldn't require the active approval of Parliament, would it?
I thought it would require another piece of Primary legislation to amend, though, these days, it depends on what Bercow says the rules are. And I could be wrong anyway.
I'm just going by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which provides for the "exit date" to be amended by regulations.
Maybe there's some other piece of legislation that would need to be amended by primary legislation, but it looks as though the idea was to avoid that.
Oh - and does an extension really require the approval of Parliament? I mean in legal terms.
It would require amending existing legislation, so regardless of whether asking the EU requires approval, for the extension to happen Parliament has to vote for it.
But that can be done by regulations, can't it, rather than by an Act of Parliament? It wouldn't require the active approval of Parliament, would it?
That's right. Implementing an extention of A50 into UK law can be done by regulations under the Withdrawal Act section 20(4).
Ok, a mention of Estonia was bound to trigger me. Estonia shouldn't be on the list. Corporate taxation is zero only on undistributed profits, if any dividend payout the it is taxed as income, at 20%. It is a method to promote the growth of Estonian companies, not a method for foreigners to incorporate and avoid tax. In fact even for Estonian E-residents who set up Estonian companies from overseas, the reporting is actually relatively onerous.
Nor does Estonia stint on defence, it has always complied with the NATO 2% of GDP spend, and sometimes by a big margin, but the pressure from Russia is strong, and Estonia has drones, not an airforce, hence the NATO air policing squadron.
More to the actual point. Estonia does not generally run a deficit, so it has rock solid public finances, the government is run efficiently and has net public assets, rather than a national debt. This explains why Estonia has a AA- credit rating, stable outlook (UK is AA, negative outlook). The country has professionals, not bullshitters, in Parliament. The civil service can deliver ferry charters themselves, without lining the pockets of dubious Tory-connected start-ups. Leadership and management is not just a load of box ticking diversity training horsesh*t. Take back control? I think we are now seeing just how dreadful the quality of UK management in the public and private sectors has got over the past few years. In my lifetime the UK has gone from being the second largest economy in the world to being on the verge of leaving the top ten. That is NOT inevitable decline- it is crappy high schools, the class system, a tolerance of bad behaviour, you name it.
Right now I'm transiting Manchester Airport. Its a toilet. Dingy, dirty, cramped, badly designed, surly staff, everything done as "that'll do". might as well be a metaphor for the whole of the UK and it makes me very very angry. Pull your bloody socks up UK! As for tax avoidance, the sleazy cabal of Tory estate agents will not look kindly on taxing the murderers and other criminals from around the world who have bought flats in London... A Land Value tax should be the start of a comprehensive reform of the Uk tax code- its the longest in the world at 27,000 pages and it mostly designed to hide the fact that the rich pay massively less than the poor. In fact it is London that is the centre of global money laundering so take the beam out of your own eye before you mention the motes elsewhere.
I really think you are missing the main point here. Where else in the EU was @alanbrooke going to get an "E".
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They knew it would be powerful, do some damage, but also end the war: a good thing. But they also thought there was a 10% risk it would ignite the atmosphere, killing the entire world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
No, it really wasn't. The world's best physicists knew that a chain reaction needs a concentrated fissile material. Heck, a great majority of the problem in getting a plutonium bomb to work is how you keep the chain reaction going by not losing too many spare neutrons - and that's in a material that was extremely dense even before being squished further.
From a quick googling, it sounds like this was raised and treated as a real possibility by Edward Teller, but ruled out by him and others quite quickly.
Excellent thread @alanbrooke, and some food for thought that avoids discussing the B-word.
As others have suggested, the way forward is necessarily complex, because if it were easy we would have done it already.
Domestically, we need to massively simplify the tax system, and look at for example property taxes rather than income taxes. B2C retail also needs some serious help, unless we want to see our High Streets die completely. Michael Gove or Lis Truss for Chancellor please, people prepared to think outside the box rather than just tinker even more with the current broken system.
Internationally, we should work with organisations like the WTO when we retake our seat there, to look at global standards for taxation of large multinationals, with special reference to the tech companies who are selling intangibles online and can legitimately base themselves almost anywhere.
Ok, a mention of Estonia was bound to trigger me. Estonia shouldn't be on the list. Corporate taxation is zero only on undistributed profits, if any dividend payout the it is taxed as income, at 20%. It is a method to promote the growth of Estonian companies, not a method for foreigners to incorporate and avoid tax. In fact even for Estonian E-residents who set up Estonian companies from overseas, the reporting is actually relatively onerous.
Nor does Estonia stint on defence, it has always complied with the NATO 2% of GDP spend, and sometimes by a big margin, but the pressure from Russia is strong, and Estonia has drones, not an airforce, hence the NATO air policing squadron.
More to the actual point. Estonia does not generally run a deficit, so it has rock solid public finances, the government is run efficiently and has net public assets, rather than a national debt. This explains why Estonia has a AA- credit rating, stable outlook (UK is AA, negative outlook). The country has professionals, not bullshitters, in Parliament. The civil service can deliver ferry charters themselves, without lining the pockets of dubious Tory-connected start-ups. Leadership and management is not just a load of box ticking diversity training horsesh*t. Take back control? I think we are now seeing just how dreadful the quality of UK management in the public and private sectors has got over the past few years. In my lifetime the UK has gone from being the second largest economy in the world to being on the verge of leaving the top ten. That is NOT inevitable decline- it is crappy high schools, the class system, a tolerance of bad behaviour, you name it.
Right now I'm transiting Manchester Airport. Its a toilet. Dingy, dirty, cramped, badly designed, surly staff, everything done as "that'll do". might as well be a metaphor for the whole of the UK and it makes me very very angry. Pull your bloody socks up UK! As for tax avoidance, the sleazy cabal of Tory estate agents will not look kindly on taxing the murderers and other criminals from around the world who have bought flats in London... A Land Value tax should be the start of a comprehensive reform of the Uk tax code- its the longest in the world at 27,000 pages and it mostly designed to hide the fact that the rich pay massively less than the poor. In fact it is London that is the centre of global money laundering so take the beam out of your own eye before you mention the motes elsewhere.
I really think you are missing the main point here. Where else in the EU was @alanbrooke going to get an "E".
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
I was rather referring to his claim that it is. Generally his predictions have not been well received on here.
No, it isn't off the table, and nor can Theresa May take it off the table. She can say she doesn't want it to happen, more firmly than she has already said that, but unless and until parliament decides which of the existing deal or cancelling Brexit it does want, rather than what it doesn't want, then No Deal remains a clear and present danger.
She can take it off the table by bringing forward legislation that says on ere’s not, it won’t.
So Parliment just over-rides the referendum...
Yeah, thats not going to have consquences...
It might have the consequence of encouraging Leave supporting MPs to vote in favour of a deal that takes us out of the EU. Would that be so bad?
As I said, there are not enough of them. The majority want to Remain. They are just too cowardly to actually make it happen themselves and want a smoke screen so they can claim to the electorate it wasn't their fault.
According to Rentoul there are 300 MPs who want EUref2 with a Remain option, more than the 220 MPs who back May's Deal or the 119 MPs who back No Deal.
If May's Deal is voted down May might see proposing a Leave with the Deal or No Deal referendum as the only way to try and see off MPs voting for EUref2 with a Remain option if both Deal and No Deal MPs back the former given combined they have more than those backing EUref2 with a Remain option
A referendum without a Remain option would be an utter nonsense.
As would a referendum with a No Deal option – given that a vast majority of MPs oppose such an outcome.
A viable – and perfectly democratic – option would be Deal vs Remain.
We had a refererendum with a Remain option in 2016, Remain lost.
We should only be deciding on the method of Leaving, Deal or No Deal
We had a referendum with a Leave option in 1975, Leave lost.
You really dumb enough to equate the EEC and the EU?
Food - Global Clothes- Global Finance- Global Media- Global Transportation- Global Business- Global Education- Global
Taxation - National Politics- National Healthcare- National
Only one way this is going despite desperate efforts like Brexit to roll back time.
Efforts like the EU are desperate attempts to roll back time. It is a sclerotic and antiquated answer to problems from the 1940s and 1950s.
The hint is that food etc is "global" and not "continental". In aspiring to make Europe "national" it does the square root of sod all to address global concerns.
Food - Global Clothes- Global Finance- Global Media- Global Transportation- Global Business- Global Education- Global
Taxation - National Politics- National Healthcare- National
Only one way this is going despite desperate efforts like Brexit to roll back time.
Exactly. Or to take a historical perspective, there was a time when Kent and the Isle of Wight were kingdoms in their own right. Replaced by larger entities such as Wessex and Mercia. Replaced by England. Replaced by the United Kingdom.
The world is ever more interconnected and global. Many of the high level challenges we face - economic, climate, defence, security, taxation, environment - demand international cooperation and organisation.
The missing element - as Liz Truss recognised just recently - is to balance the progressive pooling of sovereignty across national boundaries with the devolution of sovereignty to local communities within the nation. The way to really take back control is to release local authorities from the straightjacket of control from Whitehall and Westminster.
As I mentioned earlier the meeting between Salvini and Morawiecki in Warsaw yesterday looked very ominous for the EU. Not a lot of compromising language from either of them and threats of a new Anti-EU alliance.
all most makes me want to stay in the EU :-)
What will be the price extracted from Brussels for Italy and Poland agreeing to any Art 50 extension?
Back on Brexit, I wonder how the EU would react if the UK requested not a piddling little 3-month extension but a grand, ambitious 3-year one? If you can't go forward and you can't go back, why not embrace the constraint and go nowhere?
Next stop, troop trains en route to Menton and Ventimiglia
Times front page yesterday led on Italy refusing to send art to a Da Vinci exhibition in France as Salvini wanted to give Macron an up yours
Macrons big gesture of telling the Italians they will have to take him on if they dont behave now looks a bit of daft braggadocio to use an Italain phrase
I am just returned from Dublin where I saw professionally produced flyposts encouraging people to support a yellow vest movement in Ireland.
I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but this does have me idly wondering about Russian involvement.
I only saw the flyposts and have no other information to offer, other than that they were professionally produced. They directed toward a website but I can't remember what it was.
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They e world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
No, it really wasn't. The world's best physicists knew that a chain reaction needs a concentrated fissile material. Heck, a great majority of the problem in getting a plutonium bomb to work is how you keep the chain reaction going by not losing too many spare neutrons - and that's in a material that was extremely dense even before being squished further.
From a quick googling, it sounds like this was raised and treated as a real possibility by Edward Teller, but ruled out by him and others quite quickly.
Ffs I said it was seriously raised as a possibility, then dismissed as very very unlikely (but not impossible). My original 10% comment was a gag within a larger analogy with Hard Brexit. A gag I readily admitted
Incidentally I think the analogy holds. Hard Brexit is a massive untested dangerous experiment, no one can be sure how it will pan out. It will cause damage for sure, but likely be for the good in the end. Yet there is a tiny but not impossible chance it will blow up the world economy.
You are in the fortunate position of having flipped about so dramatically that, whatever outcome eventually arises from the current chaos, you will be able to point to some of your posts that saw it coming. Just a shame about the rest of them, eh?
We had a referendum with a Leave option in 1975, Leave lost.
You really dumb enough to equate the EEC and the EU?
Meh. It's a continuum.
You don't have a referendum every time some detail of an existing agreement changes; you have a referendum if you think there's material evidence that (incoming Brexiteer phrase) "the will of the people" may have changed. Europe having changed isn't the issue. British people's willingness to persist with the arrangement is.
Thus the "but we had a referendum two years ago" attitude is fatuous. The point of a second referendum would not be to test the difference between the EU of 2016 and of 2018, and no-one is claiming it would be. The point of a second referendum would be to test if British people's willingness to be part of Europe has changed, bearing in mind what we know now and didn't know in 2016.
And calling an argument, rather than a person, "fatuous" is as far as I'm prepared to go. Because there's too much playing the man on PB this week, and not enough playing the ball.
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Only one way this is going despite desperate efforts like Brexit to roll back time.
Efforts like the EU are desperate attempts to roll back time. It is a sclerotic and antiquated answer to problems from the 1940s and 1950s.
The hint is that food etc is "global" and not "continental". In aspiring to make Europe "national" it does the square root of sod all to address global concerns.
I am not sure that's true. My family benefited from continent wide initiatives like post 1990s car safety standards, E111 and Erasmus. Just because you can't solve things globally in the first instance, doesn't mean continent wide solutions don't have value. Arguably they point the way.
Next stop, troop trains en route to Menton and Ventimiglia
Times front page yesterday led on Italy refusing to send art to a Da Vinci exhibition in France as Salvini wanted to give Macron an up yours
Macrons big gesture of telling the Italians they will have to take him on if they dont behave now looks a bit of daft braggadocio to use an Italain phrase
Law enforcement officials in Spain have arrested 28 professional tennis players in an investigation into match-fixing.
"The suspects bribed professional players to guarantee predetermined results and used the identities of thousands of citizens to bet on the pre-arranged games," Europol said.
At least 97 ITF Futures and Challenger matches were fixed, it said.
It is a huge problem when betting is allowed on minor sporting contests, where the prize money is very small compared to the possible winnings from betting.
I wouldn't be surprised if lower league football is also rife with it. I seemed to remember that one of the North African leagues has already been exposed as fixed matches r us.
Ffs I said it was seriously raised as a possibility, then dismissed as very very unlikely (but not impossible). My original 10% comment was a gag within a larger analogy with Hard Brexit. A gag I readily admitted
Incidentally I think the analogy holds. Hard Brexit is a massive untested dangerous experiment, no one can be sure how it will pan out. It will cause damage for sure, but likely be for the good in the end. Yet there is a tiny but not impossible chance it will blow up the world economy.
You are in the fortunate position of having flipped about so dramatically that, whatever outcome eventually arises from the current chaos, you will be able to point to some of your posts that saw it coming. Just a shame about the rest of them, eh?
The polite thing to do in this sort of situation is to say something like: "Well done Sean."
Ffs I said it was seriously raised as a possibility, then dismissed as very very unlikely (but not impossible). My original 10% comment was a gag within a larger analogy with Hard Brexit. A gag I readily admitted
Incidentally I think the analogy holds. Hard Brexit is a massive untested dangerous experiment, no one can be sure how it will pan out. It will cause damage for sure, but likely be for the good in the end. Yet there is a tiny but not impossible chance it will blow up the world economy.
You are in the fortunate position of having flipped about so dramatically that, whatever outcome eventually arises from the current chaos, you will be able to point to some of your posts that saw it coming. Just a shame about the rest of them, eh?
The polite thing to do in this sort of situation is to say something like: "Well done Sean."
Back on Brexit, I wonder how the EU would react if the UK requested not a piddling little 3-month extension but a grand, ambitious 3-year one? If you can't go forward and you can't go back, why not embrace the constraint and go nowhere?
An extension to the end of the transition period would make sense. And drop the BS about not negotiating until we leave. If we're paying until then anyway, obeying laws until then too we may as well be voting members until then.
We had a referendum with a Leave option in 1975, Leave lost.
You really dumb enough to equate the EEC and the EU?
Meh. It's a continuum.
You don't have a referendum every time some detail of an existing agreement changes; you have a referendum if you think there's material evidence that (incoming Brexiteer phrase) "the will of the people" may have changed. Europe having changed isn't the issue. British people's willingness to persist with the arrangement is.
Thus the "but we had a referendum two years ago" attitude is fatuous. The point of a second referendum would not be to test the difference between the EU of 2016 and of 2018, and no-one is claiming it would be. The point of a second referendum would be to test if British people's willingness to be part of Europe has changed, bearing in mind what we know now and didn't know in 2016.
And calling an argument, rather than a person, "fatuous" is as far as I'm prepared to go. Because there's too much playing the man on PB this week, and not enough playing the ball.
Funny how we were never allowed a say in that "continuum". Until we were - and then rejected that continuum.
If in 2016 we had been voting on staying in the EEC, it would have passed as comfortably as it did in 1975. But something changed in the intervening 41 years......
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They e world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
No, it really wasn't. The world's best physicists knew that a chain reaction needs a concentrated fissile material. Heck, a great majority of the problem in getting a plutonium bomb to work is how you keep the chain reaction going by not losing too many spare neutrons - and that's in a material that was extremely dense even before being squished further.
From a quick googling, it sounds like this was raised and treated as a real possibility by Edward Teller, but ruled out by him and others quite quickly.
You are in the fortunate position of having flipped about so dramatically that, whatever outcome eventually arises from the current chaos, you will be able to point to some of your posts that saw it coming. Just a shame about the rest of them, eh?
Sean's approach is the direct opposite of that classic 'those who never say anything can never say anything wrong'.
He has masterminded the 'those who say absolutely everything it is possible to say will always say something right'.
To give him his dues, he does so quite shamelessly and in an entertaining manner.
From a quick googling, it sounds like this was raised and treated as a real possibility by Edward Teller, but ruled out by him and others quite quickly.
Ffs I said it was seriously raised as a possibility, then dismissed as very very unlikely (but not impossible). My original 10% comment was a gag within a larger analogy with Hard Brexit. A gag I readily admitted
Incidentally I think the analogy holds. Hard Brexit is a massive untested dangerous experiment, no one can be sure how it will pan out. It will cause damage for sure, but likely be for the good in the end. Yet there is a tiny but not impossible chance it will blow up the world economy.
Sean's right on that. We don't know how it will pan out and a lot of economies are dangerously brittle.
Suppose that we crash out with No Deal in a worst-case scenario, the ports clog up, supermarkets run out of food, protests lead to further chaos rendering deliveries of other essential items and a lot of just-in-time processing goes wrong.
From Britain, large parts of NW Europe also clog up, including Ireland. Britain's economy takes a nose-dive and a fall in asset prices of 20% within a month triggers falls elsewhere in Europe, causing banks to fail - which then leads to a feedback effect. The ECB and other world banks step in but while that solves the problem in the short term, it triggers another bout of retrenchment among those exposed to risk and a flight to safety. Trade slows, infecting the US, with its $1trn federal deficit, and China, with its own dodgy banks. The UK political system seizes up, with the Tories falling out in lumps, Labour split and huge public anger towards Europe. Ability to respond to the growing economic crisis is compromised and a general election results. Labour wins, promises big spending and taxation. The pound tanks further, to £1=85c. Suddenly, banks are failing in China, the US, and Europe. Commodity prices tank in line, rendering Russia almost insolvent. Putin responds by invading Ukraine. And so on.
None of which is to say that it's likely - but it's not inconceivable.
I am just returned from Dublin where I saw professionally produced flyposts encouraging people to support a yellow vest movement in Ireland.
I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but this does have me idly wondering about Russian involvement.
Dublin is not Ireland. Go out to the rural west and you will find forgotten communities and the kind of town country split we have between London and the provinces.
Ffs I said it was seriously raised as a possibility, then dismissed as very very unlikely (but not impossible). My original 10% comment was a gag within a larger analogy with Hard Brexit. A gag I readily admitted
Incidentally I think the analogy holds. Hard Brexit is a massive untested dangerous experiment, no one can be sure how it will pan out. It will cause damage for sure, but likely be for the good in the end. Yet there is a tiny but not impossible chance it will blow up the world economy.
You are in the fortunate position of having flipped about so dramatically that, whatever outcome eventually arises from the current chaos, you will be able to point to some of your posts that saw it coming. Just a shame about the rest of them, eh?
The polite thing to do in this sort of situation is to say something like: "Well done Sean."
Where did British manners go, eh?
I thought I was being quite polite enough. Sean is one of those who chose to gamble our country's future on a false promise. Since when he's done everything he can to cover his tracks by backing almost every potential outcome from the shambles that has followed from his own vote.
We had a referendum with a Leave option in 1975, Leave lost.
You really dumb enough to equate the EEC and the EU?
Meh. It's a continuum.
You don't have a referendum every time some detail of an existing agreement changes; you have a referendum if you think there's material evidence that (incoming Brexiteer phrase) "the will of the people" may have changed. Europe having changed isn't the issue. British people's willingness to persist with the arrangement is.
Thus the "but we had a referendum two years ago" attitude is fatuous. The point of a second referendum would not be to test the difference between the EU of 2016 and of 2018, and no-one is claiming it would be. The point of a second referendum would be to test if British people's willingness to be part of Europe has changed, bearing in mind what we know now and didn't know in 2016.
And calling an argument, rather than a person, "fatuous" is as far as I'm prepared to go. Because there's too much playing the man on PB this week, and not enough playing the ball.
Actually the Irish have had referendums each time there's been changes (ie Treaty changes which there haven't been since 2016).
As a result Irish concerns have been addressed along the way. Arguably had we done the same thing we would not be leaving now.
I think one problem No Dealers have is that they (mostly) rejected the option of staying in the Single Market as not fulfilling the referendum despite it technically fulfilling the text we voted on, because keeping FoM wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for. The reasoning behind this is usually either "because that's not the vision the Leave campaign was selling" or "because that's just what I feel". But the exact same reasoning can be used by Dealers and Remainers to say that No Deal isn't in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for.
Spot on.
If we had compromised on SM+CU a year ago, we'd all be getting on with our lives now. Sadly, such a sensible approach was beyond the hardliners, who obsessed about FoM. This was not on the ballot paper, and no end of bloody word clouds can alter that clear truth.
Yes. We also may as well have remained in the EU.
Can you give me an explanation as to how SM+CU is better than EU membership?
There are costs and benefits to leaving but as far as I can tell SM+CU has costs but no benefits which should patently rule it out as an absurd option.
A 52% vote to Leave suggests that Brexit should be as soft as possible.
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They e world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
No, it really wasn't. The world's best physicists knew that a chain reaction needs a concentrated fissile material. Heck, a great majority of the problem in getting a plutonium bomb to work is how you keep the chain reaction going by not losing too many spare neutrons - and that's in a material that was extremely dense even before being squished further.
From a quick googling, it sounds like this was raised and treated as a real possibility by Edward Teller, but ruled out by him and others quite quickly.
You are in the fortunate position of having flipped about so dramatically that, whatever outcome eventually arises from the current chaos, you will be able to point to some of your posts that saw it coming. Just a shame about the rest of them, eh?
Sean's approach is the direct opposite of that classic 'those who never say anything can never say anything wrong'.
He has masterminded the 'those who say absolutely everything it is possible to say will always say something right'.
To give him his dues, he does so quite shamelessly and in an entertaining manner.
When he's sober, he's entertaining; when not, he's offensive.
A muttering from someone in his local association doing the SM rounds.
"Dominic Grieve has now voted against the Party whip six times and never held a meeting with his constituency party members to discuss Brexit. Arrogance has no bounds!"
Seeing as Mr Brooke took the time to write the article here is my tuppence worth.
The simple fact is that it is so easy to relocate money to where you want it to end up in the EU (that fantastic single market). So one of the commonly used schemes to get the money to the low tax jurisdiction is:
MNC Sub in UK does all selling to Customer A Customer A places order on MNC sub in Low Tax country (not UK) MNC sub places order on suppliers in EU for services to make and deliver goods to Customer A in UK. Customer receives goods and pays full invoice value to MNC sub in low tax. MNC Low tax pays contract manufacturer and pays commission to UK sub for services rendered. Commission fee adds up to cost base of UK sub so profit is zero, corp tax zero. MNC sub in low tax country may employ 1 person and be massively profitable.
All of the above is perfectly legal and the MNC would argue is just how all businesses structure their affairs. So how do you tax it from the point of the UK?
Currently the countries are trying to add up what the revenue in the UK would be if the customers had paid the UK sub directly with not a lot of success. In simple terms countries would rather have the 20% odd vat than the corp tax because one is on sales and the other is on profits. So I would look for some kind of transaction tax on the above chain based on when the goods access the UK and then when the commission is paid to the UK sub. Get the percentage correct and we can lower corp tax/business rates for all the other businesses in the UK.
I think one problem No Dealers have is that they (mostly) rejected the option of staying in the Single Market as not fulfilling the referendum despite it technically fulfilling the text we voted on, because keeping FoM wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for. The reasoning behind this is usually either "because that's not the vision the Leave campaign was selling" or "because that's just what I feel". But the exact same reasoning can be used by Dealers and Remainers to say that No Deal isn't in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for.
Spot on.
If we had compromised on SM+CU a year ago, we'd all be getting on with our lives now. Sadly, such a sensible approach was beyond the hardliners, who obsessed about FoM. This was not on the ballot paper, and no end of bloody word clouds can alter that clear truth.
Yes. We also may as well have remained in the EU.
Can you give me an explanation as to how SM+CU is better than EU membership?
There are costs and benefits to leaving but as far as I can tell SM+CU has costs but no benefits which should patently rule it out as an absurd option.
ALL Leave options are worse than Remain. SM+CU is the least damaging Leave alternative. Just because we vote something doesn't make it sensible. Absurd option or no (and I agree with you on that for different reasons from you), I'm somewhat confident that's where we'll end up.
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Only one way this is going despite desperate efforts like Brexit to roll back time.
Exactly. Or to take a historical perspective, there was a time when Kent and the Isle of Wight were kingdoms in their own right. Replaced by larger entities such as Wessex and Mercia. Replaced by England. Replaced by the United Kingdom.
The world is ever more interconnected and global. Many of the high level challenges we face - economic, climate, defence, security, taxation, environment - demand international cooperation and organisation.
The missing element - as Liz Truss recognised just recently - is to balance the progressive pooling of sovereignty across national boundaries with the devolution of sovereignty to local communities within the nation. The way to really take back control is to release local authorities from the straightjacket of control from Whitehall and Westminster.
Why bother when so much of what they need to decide on is already dictated by Brussels?
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Taxation - National Politics- National Healthcare- National
Only one way this is going despite desperate efforts like Brexit to roll back time.
Exactly. Or to take a historical perspective, there was a time when Kent and the Isle of Wight were kingdoms in their own right. Replaced by larger entities such as Wessex and Mercia. Replaced by England. Replaced by the United Kingdom.
The world is ever more interconnected and global. Many of the high level challenges we face - economic, climate, defence, security, taxation, environment - demand international cooperation and organisation.
The missing element - as Liz Truss recognised just recently - is to balance the progressive pooling of sovereignty across national boundaries with the devolution of sovereignty to local communities within the nation. The way to really take back control is to release local authorities from the straightjacket of control from Whitehall and Westminster.
Why bother when so much of what they need to decide on is already dictated by Brussels?
Having been a councillor on a principal authority for twenty four years, I can assure you that the constraints on what we could do almost all derived from the UK government, not the EU.
We had a referendum with a Leave option in 1975, Leave lost.
You really dumb enough to equate the EEC and the EU?
Meh. It's a continuum.
You don't have a referendum every time some detail of an existing agreement changes; you have a referendum if you think there's material evidence that (incoming Brexiteer phrase) "the will of the people" may have changed. Europe having changed isn't the issue. British people's willingness to persist with the arrangement is.
Thus the "but we had a referendum two years ago" attitude is fatuous. The point of a second referendum would not be to test the difference between the EU of 2016 and of 2018, and no-one is claiming it would be. The point of a second referendum would be to test if British people's willingness to be part of Europe has changed, bearing in mind what we know now and didn't know in 2016.
And calling an argument, rather than a person, "fatuous" is as far as I'm prepared to go. Because there's too much playing the man on PB this week, and not enough playing the ball.
Funny how we were never allowed a say in that "continuum". Until we were - and then rejected that continuum.
If in 2016 we had been voting on staying in the EEC, it would have passed as comfortably as it did in 1975. But something changed in the intervening 41 years......
Sure, I'm not going to disagree with that.
But something has also changed between 2016 and 2019, and that's our knowledge of how likely we are to thrive outside the EU. That's the reasoning for a second referendum.
We had a referendum with a Leave option in 1975, Leave lost.
You really dumb enough to equate the EEC and the EU?
Meh. It's a continuum.
You don't have a referendum every time some detail of an existing agreement changes; you have a referendum if you think there's material evidence that (incoming Brexiteer phrase) "the will of the people" may have changed. Europe having changed isn't the issue. British people's willingness to persist with the arrangement is.
Thus the "but we had a referendum two years ago" attitude is fatuous. The point of a second referendum would not be to test the difference between the EU of 2016 and of 2018, and no-one is claiming it would be. The point of a second referendum would be to test if British people's willingness to be part of Europe has changed, bearing in mind what we know now and didn't know in 2016.
And calling an argument, rather than a person, "fatuous" is as far as I'm prepared to go. Because there's too much playing the man on PB this week, and not enough playing the ball.
Funny how we were never allowed a say in that "continuum". Until we were - and then rejected that continuum.
If in 2016 we had been voting on staying in the EEC, it would have passed as comfortably as it did in 1975. But something changed in the intervening 41 years......
Sure, I'm not going to disagree with that.
But something has also changed between 2016 and 2019, and that's our knowledge of how likely we are to thrive outside the EU. That's the reasoning for a second referendum.
you have absolutelly no idea if we will thrive or fall off a cliff,nobody does.
I wonder if Ford are going to bite the bullet and look at their high cost German plants, they say nothing is off the table.
With JLR it is regrettable that 4500 jobs go short term but they confirmed that Hams Hall with be their electric battery plant and Wolverhampton the electric motor plant. Very good news for the future and all decided 80 odd days to brexit. Perhaps Boy Greg has been doing some work instead of throwing his toys out of the pram for a change.
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They e world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
No, it really wasn'teven before being squished further.
From a quick googling, it sounds like this was raised and treated as a real possibility by Edward Teller, but ruled out by him and others quite quickly.
You are in the fortunate position of having flipped about so dramatically that, whatever outcome eventually arises from the current chaos, you will be able to point to some of your posts that saw it coming. Just a shame about the rest of them, eh?
Sean's approach is the direct opposite of that classic 'those who never say anything can never say anything wrong'.
He has masterminded the 'those who say absolutely everything it is possible to say will always say something right'.
To give him his dues, he does so quite shamelessly and in an entertaining manner.
Now that Trump has changed the rules of the game, I suspect SeanT is considering a run for office. If you can say mad random shit in a mildly entertaining way you’re a shoo in, no matter what dodgy shit is in your past.
Mr. Pulpstar, as someone pretty rubbish at self-promotion, I agree entirely.
There is a lot of it about.
My views of the near-hopeless Laura K are well known, for example.
She is an incredibly weak journalist to be in such a high profile position, but is master of self promotion via platitudinous tweets of very limited comic value.
If she put as much effort into getting behind the scenes and talking to people the government doesn't want her to talk to as she did in tweeting nonsense, the nation would be far better served.
Sadly, talent is no match for self-promotional skills in the social media age.
Now that Trump has changed the rules of the game, I suspect SeanT is considering a run for office. If you can say mad random shit in a mildly entertaining way you’re a shoo in, no matter what dodgy shit is in your past.
You don't even need to be entertaining. Look at Corbyn.
Food - Global Clothes- Global Finance- Global Media- Global Transportation- Global Business- Global Education- Global
Taxation - National Politics- National Healthcare- National
Only one way this is going despite desperate efforts like Brexit to roll back time.
Exactly. Or to take a historical perspective, there was a time when Kent and the Isle of Wight were kingdoms in their own right. Replaced by larger entities such as Wessex and Mercia. Replaced by England. Replaced by the United Kingdom.
The world is ever more interconnected and global. Many of the high level challenges we face - economic, climate, defence, security, taxation, environment - demand international cooperation and organisation.
The missing element - as Liz Truss recognised just recently - is to balance the progressive pooling of sovereignty across national boundaries with the devolution of sovereignty to local communities within the nation. The way to really take back control is to release local authorities from the straightjacket of control from Whitehall and Westminster.
Why bother when so much of what they need to decide on is already dictated by Brussels?
Having been a councillor on a principal authority for twenty four years, I can assure you that the constraints on what we could do almost all derived from the UK government, not the EU.
Having been active opposing council plans for far longer than that I can assure you that much of what councils can and cannot do is ultimately derived from EU legislation whether it comes via Westminster or not.
Good header Alan thank-you. I must confess I am surprised at your stance on this topic, which I find refreshing. (Memo to self: be wary of extrapolating too much about PBers from their postings on Brexit. )
It's probably been said already but wouldn't we stand a much better chance of tackling this if we remained in the EU and worked together with France and Germany to achieve and equitable outcome?
I think one problem No Dealers have is that they (mostly) rejected the option of staying in the Single Market as not fulfilling the referendum despite it technically fulfilling the text we voted on, because keeping FoM wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for. The reasoning behind this is usually either "because that's not the vision the Leave campaign was selling" or "because that's just what I feel". But the exact same reasoning can be used by Dealers and Remainers to say that No Deal isn't in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for.
Spot on.
If we had compromised on SM+CU a year ago, we'd all be getting on with our lives now. Sadly, such a sensible approach was beyond the hardliners, who obsessed about FoM. This was not on the ballot paper, and no end of bloody word clouds can alter that clear truth.
Yes. We also may as well have remained in the EU.
Can you give me an explanation as to how SM+CU is better than EU membership?
There are costs and benefits to leaving but as far as I can tell SM+CU has costs but no benefits which should patently rule it out as an absurd option.
ALL Leave options are worse than Remain. SM+CU is the least damaging Leave alternative. Just because we vote something doesn't make it sensible. Absurd option or no (and I agree with you on that for different reasons from you), I'm somewhat confident that's where we'll end up.
All choices have a cost and a benefit. I can see both sides (shame if you can't).
Leaving the Single Market means we can set our own rules and control migration at the cost of losing SM membership benefits. Leaving the CU means we can sign our own trade deals at the cost of losing CU benefits.
Leaving EU but staying in SM and CU means we lose all our membership rights to set rules etc and gain . . . ??? Exiting the CFP and CAP seems to be about it.
Food - Global Clothes- Global Finance- Global Media- Global Transportation- Global Business- Global Education- Global
Taxation - National Politics- National Healthcare- National
Only one way this is going despite desperate efforts like Brexit to roll back time.
Exactly. Or to take a historical perspective, there was a time when Kent and the Isle of Wight were kingdoms in their own right. Replaced by larger entities such as Wessex and Mercia. Replaced by England. Replaced by the United Kingdom.
The world is ever more interconnected and global. Many of the high level challenges we face - economic, climate, defence, security, taxation, environment - demand international cooperation and organisation.
The missing element - as Liz Truss recognised just recently - is to balance the progressive pooling of sovereignty across national boundaries with the devolution of sovereignty to local communities within the nation. The way to really take back control is to release local authorities from the straightjacket of control from Whitehall and Westminster.
Why bother when so much of what they need to decide on is already dictated by Brussels?
Having been a councillor on a principal authority for twenty four years, I can assure you that the constraints on what we could do almost all derived from the UK government, not the EU.
Having been active opposing council plans for far longer than that I can assure you that much of what councils can and cannot do is ultimately derived from EU legislation whether it comes via Westminster or not.
Clearly there is no shaking you from the fantasy world in which you choose to inhabit.
I wonder if Ford are going to bite the bullet and look at their high cost German plants, they say nothing is off the table.
With JLR it is regrettable that 4500 jobs go short term but they confirmed that Hams Hall with be their electric battery plant and Wolverhampton the electric motor plant. Very good news for the future and all decided 80 odd days to brexit. Perhaps Boy Greg has been doing some work instead of throwing his toys out of the pram for a change.
I really hope they butcher those bastards in Cologne - I assume you have some experience of automotive supply - I could say what I think of them but its probably going to land me in a court ! :-)
No doubt this will all end up their ususal way, the Jerries will mount a stout defence, the yanks will send over a 7 year old with no experience from Dearborn and the Brit head honcho will decide to close a UK plant because its cheaper and the plebs will put up with it.
I think one problem No Dealers have is that they (mostly) rejected the option of staying in the Single Market as not fulfilling the referendum despite it technically fulfilling the text we voted on, because keeping FoM wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for. The reasoning behind this is usually either "because that's not the vision the Leave campaign was selling" or "because that's just what I feel". But the exact same reasoning can be used by Dealers and Remainers to say that No Deal isn't in keeping with the spirit of what we voted for.
Spot on.
If we had compromised on SM+CU a year ago, we'd all be getting on with our lives now. Sadly, such a sensible approach was beyond the hardliners, who obsessed about FoM. This was not on the ballot paper, and no end of bloody word clouds can alter that clear truth.
Yes. We also may as well have remained in the EU.
Can you give me an explanation as to how SM+CU is better than EU membership?
There are costs and benefits to leaving but as far as I can tell SM+CU has costs but no benefits which should patently rule it out as an absurd option.
A 52% vote to Leave suggests that Brexit should be as soft as possible.
It suggests to me that given the referendum result a competent Prime Minister would have had very little difficulty in achieving the necessary degree of consensus for leaving the political structures of the EU but continuing with a close trading relationshiop.
Witness endless statements over the years from Eurosceptics to the effect that "All we ever signed up for was a Common Market".
Food - Global Clothes- Global Finance- Global Media- Global Transportation- Global Business- Global Education- Global
Taxation - National Politics- National Healthcare- National
Only one way this is going despite desperate efforts like Brexit to roll back time.
Exactly. Or to take a historical perspective, there was a time when Kent and the Isle of Wight were kingdoms in their own right. Replaced by larger entities such as Wessex and Mercia. Replaced by England. Replaced by the United Kingdom.
The world is ever more interconnected and global. Many of the high level challenges we face - economic, climate, defence, security, taxation, environment - demand international cooperation and organisation.
The missing element - as Liz Truss recognised just recently - is to balance the progressive pooling of sovereignty across national boundaries with the devolution of sovereignty to local communities within the nation. The way to really take back control is to release local authorities from the straightjacket of control from Whitehall and Westminster.
Why bother when so much of what they need to decide on is already dictated by Brussels?
Having been a councillor on a principal authority for twenty four years, I can assure you that the constraints on what we could do almost all derived from the UK government, not the EU.
Having been active opposing council plans for far longer than that I can assure you that much of what councils can and cannot do is ultimately derived from EU legislation whether it comes via Westminster or not.
Clearly there is no shaking you from the fantasy world in which you choose to inhabit.
Clearly there is no point arguing with you as someone who denies basic facts.
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They knew it would be powerful, do some damage, but also end the war: a good thing. But they also thought there was a 10% risk it would ignite the atmosphere, killing the entire world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
No, it really wasn't. The world's best physicists knew that a chain reaction needs a concentrated fissile material. Heck, a great majority of the problem in getting a plutonium bomb to work is how you keep the chain reaction going by not losing too many spare neutrons - and that's in a material that was extremely dense even before being squished further.
From a quick googling, it sounds like this was raised and treated as a real possibility by Edward Teller, but ruled out by him and others quite quickly.
If you read the article you will clearly see that you were wrong.
Not a 10% chance of a hydrogen bomb igniting the atmosphere, not a 1 in 3million chance as an interviewer of Compton thought ( surely too high to take) but in fact there was “no chance whatever” that an atomic blast would “ignite the atmosphere.”
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They knew it would be powerful, do some damage, but also end the war: a good thing. But they also thought there was a 10% risk it would ignite the atmosphere, killing the entire world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
No, it really wasn't. The world's best physicists knew that a chain reaction needs a concentrated fissile material. Heck, a great majority of the problem in getting a plutonium bomb to work is how you keep the chain reaction going by not losing too many spare neutrons - and that's in a material that was extremely dense even before being squished further.
From a quick googling, it sounds like this was raised and treated as a real possibility by Edward Teller, but ruled out by him and others quite quickly.
If you read the article you will clearly see that you were wrong.
Not a 10% chance of a hydrogen bomb igniting the atmosphere, not a 1 in 3million chance as an interviewer of Compton thought ( surely too high to take) but in fact there was “no chance whatever” that an atomic blast would “ignite the atmosphere.”
I wonder if Ford are going to bite the bullet and look at their high cost German plants, they say nothing is off the table.
With JLR it is regrettable that 4500 jobs go short term but they confirmed that Hams Hall with be their electric battery plant and Wolverhampton the electric motor plant. Very good news for the future and all decided 80 odd days to brexit. Perhaps Boy Greg has been doing some work instead of throwing his toys out of the pram for a change.
I really hope they butcher those bastards in Cologne - I assume you have some experience of automotive supply - I could say what I think of them but its probably going to land me in a court ! :-)
No doubt this will all end up their ususal way, the Jerries will mount a stout defence, the yanks will send over a 7 year old with no experience from Dearborn and the Brit head honcho will decide to close a UK plant because its cheaper and the plebs will put up with it.
Oh dear, Alanbrooke describes Germans as "the Jerries". He read too many war comics as a child. Achtung Spitfire, for you ze var is over.
Comments
http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/172985/no-deal-brexit-could-lead-to-recession-says-axa.aspx/
Italy refuses to accept migrants from german boats plucking them out of the Mediterranean
https://www.lastampa.it/2019/01/10/italia/sea-watch-compromesso-tra-conte-e-salvini-sui-migranti-in-italia-affidati-alla-chiesa-valdese-qRRnJss9afwKYu4COODqtN/pagina.html
Instead he chose to play to the gallery and thereby sunk his own career.
That said, looking at the current veto points I don't see how you get No Deal on the ballot.
Food - Global
Clothes- Global
Finance- Global
Media- Global
Transportation- Global
Business- Global
Education- Global
Taxation - National
Politics- National
Healthcare- National
Only one way this is going despite desperate efforts like Brexit to roll back time.
https://www.conservativehome.com/parliament/2018/12/our-estimate-of-how-many-conservative-mps-oppose-the-brexit-deal-not-100-but-64.html?utm_campaign=twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter
On those kinds of numbers, the idea of asking Parliament to vote again is for the birds. There's no way back for a defeat of that magnitude.
Personally I think it'll be a bit higher, maybe majority of 190 for No.
[There's still around 40 Tory MPs unaccounted for who said they opposed the deal before and voted against May in the VONC. I find it very hard to believe May will have managed to nobble as many as 40 MPs.]
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/16/section/20
I think a citizens assembly would have been a good way to examine the various tradeoffs and perhaps there's still time for that early in the transition if we do exit with the withdrawal agreement.
Maybe there's some other piece of legislation that would need to be amended by primary legislation, but it looks as though the idea was to avoid that.
As others have suggested, the way forward is necessarily complex, because if it were easy we would have done it already.
Domestically, we need to massively simplify the tax system, and look at for example property taxes rather than income taxes. B2C retail also needs some serious help, unless we want to see our High Streets die completely. Michael Gove or Lis Truss for Chancellor please, people prepared to think outside the box rather than just tinker even more with the current broken system.
Internationally, we should work with organisations like the WTO when we retake our seat there, to look at global standards for taxation of large multinationals, with special reference to the tech companies who are selling intangibles online and can legitimately base themselves almost anywhere.
The hint is that food etc is "global" and not "continental". In aspiring to make Europe "national" it does the square root of sod all to address global concerns.
The world is ever more interconnected and global. Many of the high level challenges we face - economic, climate, defence, security, taxation, environment - demand international cooperation and organisation.
The missing element - as Liz Truss recognised just recently - is to balance the progressive pooling of sovereignty across national boundaries with the devolution of sovereignty to local communities within the nation. The way to really take back control is to release local authorities from the straightjacket of control from Whitehall and Westminster.
Macrons big gesture of telling the Italians they will have to take him on if they dont behave now looks a bit of daft braggadocio to use an Italain phrase
https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-viktor-orban-matteo-salvini-enemies/
Macron is the drooping coq of france
You don't have a referendum every time some detail of an existing agreement changes; you have a referendum if you think there's material evidence that (incoming Brexiteer phrase) "the will of the people" may have changed. Europe having changed isn't the issue. British people's willingness to persist with the arrangement is.
Thus the "but we had a referendum two years ago" attitude is fatuous. The point of a second referendum would not be to test the difference between the EU of 2016 and of 2018, and no-one is claiming it would be. The point of a second referendum would be to test if British people's willingness to be part of Europe has changed, bearing in mind what we know now and didn't know in 2016.
And calling an argument, rather than a person, "fatuous" is as far as I'm prepared to go. Because there's too much playing the man on PB this week, and not enough playing the ball.
"The suspects bribed professional players to guarantee predetermined results and used the identities of thousands of citizens to bet on the pre-arranged games," Europol said.
At least 97 ITF Futures and Challenger matches were fixed, it said.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/46822784
Making cricket look clean....
It is a huge problem when betting is allowed on minor sporting contests, where the prize money is very small compared to the possible winnings from betting.
I wouldn't be surprised if lower league football is also rife with it. I seemed to remember that one of the North African leagues has already been exposed as fixed matches r us.
Where did British manners go, eh?
If in 2016 we had been voting on staying in the EEC, it would have passed as comfortably as it did in 1975. But something changed in the intervening 41 years......
He has masterminded the 'those who say absolutely everything it is possible to say will always say something right'.
To give him his dues, he does so quite shamelessly and in an entertaining manner.
Suppose that we crash out with No Deal in a worst-case scenario, the ports clog up, supermarkets run out of food, protests lead to further chaos rendering deliveries of other essential items and a lot of just-in-time processing goes wrong.
From Britain, large parts of NW Europe also clog up, including Ireland. Britain's economy takes a nose-dive and a fall in asset prices of 20% within a month triggers falls elsewhere in Europe, causing banks to fail - which then leads to a feedback effect. The ECB and other world banks step in but while that solves the problem in the short term, it triggers another bout of retrenchment among those exposed to risk and a flight to safety. Trade slows, infecting the US, with its $1trn federal deficit, and China, with its own dodgy banks. The UK political system seizes up, with the Tories falling out in lumps, Labour split and huge public anger towards Europe. Ability to respond to the growing economic crisis is compromised and a general election results. Labour wins, promises big spending and taxation. The pound tanks further, to £1=85c. Suddenly, banks are failing in China, the US, and Europe. Commodity prices tank in line, rendering Russia almost insolvent. Putin responds by invading Ukraine. And so on.
None of which is to say that it's likely - but it's not inconceivable.
As a result Irish concerns have been addressed along the way. Arguably had we done the same thing we would not be leaving now.
"Dominic Grieve has now voted against the Party whip six times and never held a meeting with his constituency party members to discuss Brexit. Arrogance has no bounds!"
The simple fact is that it is so easy to relocate money to where you want it to end up in the EU (that fantastic single market). So one of the commonly used schemes to get the money to the low tax jurisdiction is:
MNC Sub in UK does all selling to Customer A
Customer A places order on MNC sub in Low Tax country (not UK)
MNC sub places order on suppliers in EU for services to make and deliver goods to Customer A in UK.
Customer receives goods and pays full invoice value to MNC sub in low tax.
MNC Low tax pays contract manufacturer and pays commission to UK sub for services rendered. Commission fee adds up to cost base of UK sub so profit is zero, corp tax zero.
MNC sub in low tax country may employ 1 person and be massively profitable.
All of the above is perfectly legal and the MNC would argue is just how all businesses structure their affairs.
So how do you tax it from the point of the UK?
Currently the countries are trying to add up what the revenue in the UK would be if the customers had paid the UK sub directly with not a lot of success.
In simple terms countries would rather have the 20% odd vat than the corp tax because one is on sales and the other is on profits.
So I would look for some kind of transaction tax on the above chain based on when the goods access the UK and then when the commission is paid to the UK sub. Get the percentage correct and we can lower corp tax/business rates for all the other businesses in the UK.
Certainly not perfect but maybe a start.
First indications are that the UK will escape the brunt.of redundancies and may even create jobs at the Dunton technical centre
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46821571
Mr. Pulpstar, as someone pretty rubbish at self-promotion, I agree entirely.
But something has also changed between 2016 and 2019, and that's our knowledge of how likely we are to thrive outside the EU. That's the reasoning for a second referendum.
With JLR it is regrettable that 4500 jobs go short term but they confirmed that Hams Hall with be their electric battery plant and Wolverhampton the electric motor plant. Very good news for the future and all decided 80 odd days to brexit. Perhaps Boy Greg has been doing some work instead of throwing his toys out of the pram for a change.
My views of the near-hopeless Laura K are well known, for example.
She is an incredibly weak journalist to be in such a high profile position, but is master of self promotion via platitudinous tweets of very limited comic value.
If she put as much effort into getting behind the scenes and talking to people the government doesn't want her to talk to as she did in tweeting nonsense, the nation would be far better served.
Sadly, talent is no match for self-promotional skills in the social media age.
It's probably been said already but wouldn't we stand a much better chance of tackling this if we remained in the EU and worked together with France and Germany to achieve and equitable outcome?
Leaving the Single Market means we can set our own rules and control migration at the cost of losing SM membership benefits.
Leaving the CU means we can sign our own trade deals at the cost of losing CU benefits.
Leaving EU but staying in SM and CU means we lose all our membership rights to set rules etc and gain . . . ??? Exiting the CFP and CAP seems to be about it.
https://twitter.com/kateemccann/status/1083371476496105472?s=21
NEW THREAD
No doubt this will all end up their ususal way, the Jerries will mount a stout defence, the yanks will send over a 7 year old with no experience from Dearborn and the Brit head honcho will decide to close a UK plant because its cheaper and the plebs will put up with it.
Witness endless statements over the years from Eurosceptics to the effect that "All we ever signed up for was a Common Market".
Not a 10% chance of a hydrogen bomb igniting the atmosphere, not a 1 in 3million chance as an interviewer of Compton thought ( surely too high to take) but in fact there was “no chance whatever” that an atomic blast would “ignite the atmosphere.”