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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Why they just don’t put up a hard border in Ireland
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Why they just don’t put up a hard border in Ireland
It was sobering listening to Simon Byrne, a bluff Northerner and current chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), this morning on the radio opining on the practicalities of policing a hard border should it be required. He feared a return to a paramilitary style of policing and how, with his 7,000 policemen, it would be impossible to fulfil such a remit.
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We don't need to put up a border, even if we leave without a deal we just compromise and deal as well as we can without a border. If we can't compromise with the EU which would be preferable we will need to compromise our ability to ensure there is no smuggling - as we do already today in compromising our ability to ensure there is no smuggling of alcohol or tobacco within the EU.
How many troops does the EU have to police their hard border?
Simon Byrne will have to deal with the relatives of policemen and women killed through the foly of politicians heeding advice from the Gallowgates of this worlde. Gallowgate merely has to sit on a computer and share his profound ignorance of Northern Ireland.
Now, @Sandpit makes the excellent point that they could probably bugger around for a couple of years before the wheels of international arbitration finally turn. But there is no way they could keep us indefinitely, unless you believe that the various international courts of arbitration are all EU puppets.
Its possible to be sincere while still refusing to compromise because you have a backstop. While it is possible to compromise if there is no alternative agreed.
To make a sporting analogy how a tennis player serve is different when they have a fault already compared to when they don't. Remove the 'double-fault' rule and tennis players play would be different without being insincere or wrong either way.
Remove the backstop and the incentive will be greater on the EU to compromise. To accept imperfection and the risk of smuggling. Keep the backstop and they lose the need to. Either way while operating in good faith.
You can get very clearly arrested for crimes of one sort one side, and crimes of another sort on the other. PB folk are likely to get arrested either side of course.
The ROI, and the US should simply forget the idea that they can intervene in British politics.
Remove the deadline and there is no need to compromise, a deal won't be reached.
I don't believe there is a perfect alternative. I believe there is a "good enough" alternative and I believe "good enough" will only be agreed if there is no backstop and no extension.
A practical issue is that I understand that in the first weeks there will be no customs checks on lorries coming in, to avoid bottlenecks. If criminals read the papers too, it'll surely be open season for people-traffickers and drug smugglers to bring in huge numbers? You'd think they'd check 1% of lorries, just as a deterrent.
The more I think about Trump and Greenland, the more I wonder if we are all missing a trick. When I raised the issue of sovereignty as a commodity with Philip Thompson, his line, which I appreciate, was not that the idea of purchasing Greenland was a bad idea per se but that Trump had gone about it in a ham-fisted way.
Indeed, Trump is far from being the first POTUS to have considered purchasing Greenland. I suspect it wouldn't be too difficult for the most powerful economy on the planet to make the Greenlanders an offer they would find hard to refuse in terms of personal and communal economic prosperity.
Put the offer on the table and put it to a vote of all residents.
I wonder whether the same might be true in Ulster. For decades after the creation of the Republic, said country looked poor and backward and distinctly unattractive relative to the prosperous North, propped up by London no doubt but enjoying a standard of economic life far beyond anything Dublin could offer.
Is that changing? Could a more confident and less religiously repressed Republic, supported by EU money, be in a position to make the people of the North an offer they couldn't refuse in terms of religious and political autonomy and continued unfettered access (through the SM) to European markets and EU funding as part of the Republic?
To what extent, despite our protestations, could our sovereignty and national identity really be for sale? What kind of offer would be one the majority of British people couldn't or wouldn't refuse? We've seen frightened people vote away their democratic rights - could we see greedy people sign away their national identity?
Isn't that, after all, how the UK came into being in the first place?
Why aren't the army patrolling to ensure alcohol duty gets paid?
Game on for the Ashes now.
Northern Ireland did keep our armed forces tuned up.
Implement a trusted trader scheme off our own bat.
It’s up to the EU what the RoI does
Best ask Adams and co. Notice they've started a little bit early.
Now that I know he is an ex-squaddie I don't think I'll engage with him.
There are no 'squaddies'. They're us.
Smuggling Alcohol across the border for resale is a crime. A crime that HMRC does not take lightly but also one that does not require the military or outposts to tackle.
There is no WTO MFN reason we can't allow an open border for personal consumption while requiring companies to manually declare duties just as alcohol importers for resale already have to today.
Plus the First Minister of Northern Ireland until the suspension of Stormont was from the DUP not Sinn Fein
Imagine the French had successfully invaded us in 1805 and then in 1918 we had voted in a radical government that declared independence. After a bit of a struggle they agree to go but only if they can keep Kent, Sussex and Essex - because Kent now has a majority of French ancestry, which creates an overall majority in those three counties (even though Sussex and Essex alone remain majority English). Jokes about Essex aside that would be a very sore point indeed. And that's how people in Ireland see it. Having no boder there makes it just about tolerable.
American lawmakers seem to be relaxed about this. You'd think Nanci Pelosi would have been more concerned that there's a group been actively flaunting the GFA since it was signed.
We say that EU widgets must follow our laws and duty must be paid on EU imports. We say the same for US imports. Problem solved.
On the Irish border we enforce that away from the border by prosecuting smugglers that we catch rather than border posts. The law is still the same.
This was a police station during the troubles.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/859388.stm
Sorry for the formatting.
And wasn't there various roads which passed from one country to another and then back again ?
https://images.theconversation.com/files/219759/original/file-20180521-14950-1ru31da.jpg
As I said at the start of this dialogue, it is the EU that will be building those posts. And defending them. Now we see why the EU needs its own army.
The vast bulk of trading is done by a small number of firms. Register them, have self declaration and spot checks