It was never a central strand of Brexit. That is a lie, pure and simple.
OK, it was THE central strand of Brexit
No. It was nothing. It is a fiction of your imagination.
Philip, I have a list and you're forcing me (against my better instincts) to share. It's of the undeniables that you deny and the untenables that you tenab. Highlights as below (I've left a few out) -
Priti Patel is a social liberal. Boris Johnson did not break his promise for no border in the Irish Sea. Boris Johnson did not send a letter to the EU requesting an extension. The Brexit vote was not one iota about reducing immigration. The level of government debt does not matter if the Cons are in power. Boris Johnson looks like Daniel Craig.
You're the one who compared Boris Johnson to Daniel Craig, not me. Muppet.
Warned you yesterday. Kinabalu is like a fisherman who casts his line, swims out and attaches the fish of his choice to the hook, then reels it in and says "dadaa".
Good news! Your imported dishwasher make 3% more margin for your retailer, and the price is merely the loss of the UK farming industry. Marvellous stuff!
UK farming voted for Brexit.
I voted for Brexit! At no point did I seriously think that would see the UK sail off the edge of the world as we're about to. I have to assume farmers were of a similar mind - free trade without the political union. Why a country who literally ruled the world thanks to free trade wants to do a unique experiment by becoming the only country in the world to stop free trade is beyond me.
I think you had to look at your fellow travellers which would have made it a trivial exercise to work out that it was going to be a shitshow. You and others on this site might have had a noble, sensible, and workable idea of Brexit, but 99.8% of the other Brexiters, and 99.9% of the Brexiters in power, or who were likely to be in power, were fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.
As you are now finding out.
That's just nonsense and beneath you.
The fruitcake, loonies and closet [or even quite open] racists were in the vicious Leave.EU grouping during the referendum.
Vote Leave made sure to do as much as they can to put clear water between the Leave.EU racists etc and themselves - and quite right too.
Tony Blair was prepared to have Jeremy Corbyn as a fellow Labour MP in his government despite knowing what he was. The Brexiteers in Vote Leave were not prepared to share a platform with Farage etc
Oh no! You're off on one of your comic black is white really it is exercises.
So it's a Peoples' Front of Judea thing is it? Vote Leave was chock full of racists while Leave.EU was pure as the driven snow. Or was it the other way round. Would be very interested to see the entry questionnaires for both organisations so that they could filter out the "right" type of leaver for each.
It was quite clearly the other way around.
Leave.EU and UKIP were the ones with bloody disgusting images like "Breaking Point" that were roundly condemned by the Vote Leave campaigners.
There are good and bad people for almost any thinking. Does the fact that there were anti-Semites who voted for Tony Blair's Labour Party make Tony Blair's government and anyone who voted for it anti-Semitic? No, that's preposterous.
A central strand of Tony Blair's Labour Party was not to discourage Jews from coming to the UK.
Exactly - though some Labour voters and even MPs wanted that, just as that was not a central strand of Brexit. Leading Brexiteers of Vote Leave were all welcoming of migration and wanted to encourage the world's best and brightest to be able to come here on an equal footing with people who just happened to hold European citizenship.
A central strand of the Brexit argument was an end to foreigners coming over here. That was overwhelmingly the argument by the leave movement. Just ask our very own @Isam here.
To say "oh but there was a group which welcomed foreigners, what? You didn't hear about them because everyone was focusing on Nigel's totemic poster but you should have been paying more attention" is naive.
You may feel uncomfortable about it - and who could blame you - but the promise to exclude foreigners was central to the Brexit victory and hence is being made good by PP.
You of all people, who was disgusted by Theresa May's purported racism, should be particularly alive to this.
You're lying or ignorant, that was never a central strand of Brexit. Find me anything, anything at all, from Vote Leave saying we need an "end to foreigners coming here".
Patel is not seeking to end people coming here either. She's liberalising much of non-EU migration and I welcome that.
@isam was a Leave.EU/Farage/UKIP voter so was part of the ostracised movement that had nothing to do with Vote Leave.
Boom! There you go with the black is white argument. Kudos.
I appreciate we all find different coping strategies for lockdown and yours is to argue persistently, vigorously, and with passion a completely nonsense position presumably to keep your mind sharp for when you go back to work.
But the comment that excluding foreigners "was never a central strand of Brexit" must be put up in the PB Hall of Fame (prop: HYUFD) as a top ten complete load of bollocks, can't fucking believe someone would actually say it comment.
I also appreciate that saying it probably makes you feel better about your decision to hitch your trailer to a racist bandwagon, having been so critical or perceived racism in the Conservative Party previously. But them's the facts.
Wanting a points system to control immigration is not the same as banning immigration completely and evicting non UK citizens from the country
It is not you are absolutely right. But that was not the point at hand.
Brexit was won on the desire to have fewer foreigners coming to the UK and, for a subset of Brexiters, to send some of those already here back home.
A subset is not central. Thanks for proving my point.
LOL a subset of you lot actually wanted to send home the foreigners who were already here. The central strand for the rest of you was to prevent foreigners coming here in the first place.
Now... you can argue that the Brexit campaigns never had a line in their manifesto saying "Stop the foreigners, etc" and that may well be the case, but it is really just sophistry. The Brexit campaign knew exactly where to find its support and played to the anti-foreigner gallery which is why it was often dogged during the campaign with claims of attracting racists.
Good news! Your imported dishwasher make 3% more margin for your retailer, and the price is merely the loss of the UK farming industry. Marvellous stuff!
UK farming voted for Brexit.
I voted for Brexit! At no point did I seriously think that would see the UK sail off the edge of the world as we're about to. I have to assume farmers were of a similar mind - free trade without the political union. Why a country who literally ruled the world thanks to free trade wants to do a unique experiment by becoming the only country in the world to stop free trade is beyond me.
I think you had to look at your fellow travellers which would have made it a trivial exercise to work out that it was going to be a shitshow. You and others on this site might have had a noble, sensible, and workable idea of Brexit, but 99.8% of the other Brexiters, and 99.9% of the Brexiters in power, or who were likely to be in power, were fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.
As you are now finding out.
That's just nonsense and beneath you.
The fruitcake, loonies and closet [or even quite open] racists were in the vicious Leave.EU grouping during the referendum.
Vote Leave made sure to do as much as they can to put clear water between the Leave.EU racists etc and themselves - and quite right too.
Tony Blair was prepared to have Jeremy Corbyn as a fellow Labour MP in his government despite knowing what he was. The Brexiteers in Vote Leave were not prepared to share a platform with Farage etc
Oh no! You're off on one of your comic black is white really it is exercises.
So it's a Peoples' Front of Judea thing is it? Vote Leave was chock full of racists while Leave.EU was pure as the driven snow. Or was it the other way round. Would be very interested to see the entry questionnaires for both organisations so that they could filter out the "right" type of leaver for each.
It was quite clearly the other way around.
Leave.EU and UKIP were the ones with bloody disgusting images like "Breaking Point" that were roundly condemned by the Vote Leave campaigners.
There are good and bad people for almost any thinking. Does the fact that there were anti-Semites who voted for Tony Blair's Labour Party make Tony Blair's government and anyone who voted for it anti-Semitic? No, that's preposterous.
A central strand of Tony Blair's Labour Party was not to discourage Jews from coming to the UK.
Exactly - though some Labour voters and even MPs wanted that, just as that was not a central strand of Brexit. Leading Brexiteers of Vote Leave were all welcoming of migration and wanted to encourage the world's best and brightest to be able to come here on an equal footing with people who just happened to hold European citizenship.
A central strand of the Brexit argument was an end to foreigners coming over here. That was overwhelmingly the argument by the leave movement. Just ask our very own @Isam here.
To say "oh but there was a group which welcomed foreigners, what? You didn't hear about them because everyone was focusing on Nigel's totemic poster but you should have been paying more attention" is naive.
You may feel uncomfortable about it - and who could blame you - but the promise to exclude foreigners was central to the Brexit victory and hence is being made good by PP.
You of all people, who was disgusted by Theresa May's purported racism, should be particularly alive to this.
You're lying or ignorant, that was never a central strand of Brexit. Find me anything, anything at all, from Vote Leave saying we need an "end to foreigners coming here".
Patel is not seeking to end people coming here either. She's liberalising much of non-EU migration and I welcome that.
@isam was a Leave.EU/Farage/UKIP voter so was part of the ostracised movement that had nothing to do with Vote Leave.
Boom! There you go with the black is white argument. Kudos.
I appreciate we all find different coping strategies for lockdown and yours is to argue persistently, vigorously, and with passion a completely nonsense position presumably to keep your mind sharp for when you go back to work.
But the comment that excluding foreigners "was never a central strand of Brexit" must be put up in the PB Hall of Fame (prop: HYUFD) as a top ten complete load of bollocks, can't fucking believe someone would actually say it comment.
I also appreciate that saying it probably makes you feel better about your decision to hitch your trailer to a racist bandwagon, having been so critical or perceived racism in the Conservative Party previously. But them's the facts.
It was never a central strand of Brexit. That is a lie, pure and simple.
I often surprise myself by agreeing with Mr T, but on this occasion I have to disagree. There was quite a lot of material about exactly what Ms Patel is talking about; wages being pushed down by 'foreigners' and similar.
Patel during the Brexit referendum was not seeking to end immigration. Quite the opposite. Patel said this during the referendum:
I know that many members of the Indian diaspora find it deeply unfair that other EU nationals effectively get special treatment. This can and will change if Britain leaves the EU. A vote to leave the EU is a vote to bring back control over immigration policy to the UK. This will mean that we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly. Ending unrestricted immigration from the EU means we can have a better immigration system.
Please explain how you think saying "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" means "we want to end immigration".
Do you agree or disagree with the aim that "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly"?
I recall Patel saying something like that. Mandy Rice-Davies applies to some of it. Quite frankly, as a very long-term and totally unrepentant European, who hopes to live long enough to see us Rejoin the EU, I have no problem with unrestricted immigration from, and emigration to, Europe. Rather as was the case for many years with the Empire, before it was the Commonwealth. Brightest and best can mean; we are happy to poach from less advantaged countries.
Sunak and Patel's ratings make sense. Johnson's enduring popularity is just a mystery to me - I assume it's some kind of weird English class thing.
Not sure about class, but it’s definitely weird and it’s definitely an English thing.
Yes, a lot of forelock tugging still present south of the border.
How so? People say this but I cannot say I've ever really noticed much respect or deference toward upper class people. I dont rule out the possibility but it feels like one of those certainties that people rarely bother to test or prove.
I don't think it's deference towards poshos so much as being charmed by them; Bertie Woosterism is much more insidious than any allegiance to Debretts.
Of course the inclination of some to turn into slobbering imbeciles in the presence of royalty is something different again.
Hugh Grant probably has a lot to do with it. The Queen is different: she corresponds to some Jungian archetype in the brain of true Englishmen, all of whom dream about having her to tea. It's not about poshness, though: true Englishmen do not have similar but slightly less exciting dreams about Chas n Mills, or any of the Dukes.
You're probably right about the Queen, I remember succumbing to something weird when we were trotted out from our primary school to wave as she passed in an open topped Roller. I was only eight, mind. I think Kingsley Amis referred in one of his letters to Larkin to how often she appeared in his dreams.
That implies that it's going to be the end of something quite deep seated and profound when HMQ finally goes.
You should have been there at the time of the Coronation! Young, good looking, woman, Naval Officer husband, small family, talking up historic role, new beginning. As I recall it WOW!
Not to lower the tone but well ok if you insist, I believe the Amis - Larkin exchange centred on HMQ being much more sexy than her sister.
My dad tells me that 'PM' was the one on the locker doors.
Good news! Your imported dishwasher make 3% more margin for your retailer, and the price is merely the loss of the UK farming industry. Marvellous stuff!
UK farming voted for Brexit.
I voted for Brexit! At no point did I seriously think that would see the UK sail off the edge of the world as we're about to. I have to assume farmers were of a similar mind - free trade without the political union. Why a country who literally ruled the world thanks to free trade wants to do a unique experiment by becoming the only country in the world to stop free trade is beyond me.
I think you had to look at your fellow travellers which would have made it a trivial exercise to work out that it was going to be a shitshow. You and others on this site might have had a noble, sensible, and workable idea of Brexit, but 99.8% of the other Brexiters, and 99.9% of the Brexiters in power, or who were likely to be in power, were fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.
As you are now finding out.
That's just nonsense and beneath you.
The fruitcake, loonies and closet [or even quite open] racists were in the vicious Leave.EU grouping during the referendum.
Vote Leave made sure to do as much as they can to put clear water between the Leave.EU racists etc and themselves - and quite right too.
Tony Blair was prepared to have Jeremy Corbyn as a fellow Labour MP in his government despite knowing what he was. The Brexiteers in Vote Leave were not prepared to share a platform with Farage etc
Oh no! You're off on one of your comic black is white really it is exercises.
So it's a Peoples' Front of Judea thing is it? Vote Leave was chock full of racists while Leave.EU was pure as the driven snow. Or was it the other way round. Would be very interested to see the entry questionnaires for both organisations so that they could filter out the "right" type of leaver for each.
It was quite clearly the other way around.
Leave.EU and UKIP were the ones with bloody disgusting images like "Breaking Point" that were roundly condemned by the Vote Leave campaigners.
There are good and bad people for almost any thinking. Does the fact that there were anti-Semites who voted for Tony Blair's Labour Party make Tony Blair's government and anyone who voted for it anti-Semitic? No, that's preposterous.
A central strand of Tony Blair's Labour Party was not to discourage Jews from coming to the UK.
Exactly - though some Labour voters and even MPs wanted that, just as that was not a central strand of Brexit. Leading Brexiteers of Vote Leave were all welcoming of migration and wanted to encourage the world's best and brightest to be able to come here on an equal footing with people who just happened to hold European citizenship.
A central strand of the Brexit argument was an end to foreigners coming over here. That was overwhelmingly the argument by the leave movement. Just ask our very own @Isam here.
To say "oh but there was a group which welcomed foreigners, what? You didn't hear about them because everyone was focusing on Nigel's totemic poster but you should have been paying more attention" is naive.
You may feel uncomfortable about it - and who could blame you - but the promise to exclude foreigners was central to the Brexit victory and hence is being made good by PP.
You of all people, who was disgusted by Theresa May's purported racism, should be particularly alive to this.
You're lying or ignorant, that was never a central strand of Brexit. Find me anything, anything at all, from Vote Leave saying we need an "end to foreigners coming here".
Patel is not seeking to end people coming here either. She's liberalising much of non-EU migration and I welcome that.
@isam was a Leave.EU/Farage/UKIP voter so was part of the ostracised movement that had nothing to do with Vote Leave.
Boom! There you go with the black is white argument. Kudos.
I appreciate we all find different coping strategies for lockdown and yours is to argue persistently, vigorously, and with passion a completely nonsense position presumably to keep your mind sharp for when you go back to work.
But the comment that excluding foreigners "was never a central strand of Brexit" must be put up in the PB Hall of Fame (prop: HYUFD) as a top ten complete load of bollocks, can't fucking believe someone would actually say it comment.
I also appreciate that saying it probably makes you feel better about your decision to hitch your trailer to a racist bandwagon, having been so critical or perceived racism in the Conservative Party previously. But them's the facts.
It was never a central strand of Brexit. That is a lie, pure and simple.
As I say, if it makes you feel better please feel free to repeat this as often as you like.
If it was a central strand of Brexit you should be able to find many Vote Leave spokesmen saying they wanted an end to migration. Go ahead, be my guest and quote them like I just quoted what Patel actually said during the referendum.
If you can't trump my real quote with a real quote of your own then you are lying pure and simple. Real quote please from you or admit you're lying please.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
Sunak and Patel's ratings make sense. Johnson's enduring popularity is just a mystery to me - I assume it's some kind of weird English class thing.
Not sure about class, but it’s definitely weird and it’s definitely an English thing.
Yes, a lot of forelock tugging still present south of the border.
How so? People say this but I cannot say I've ever really noticed much respect or deference toward upper class people. I dont rule out the possibility but it feels like one of those certainties that people rarely bother to test or prove.
I don't think it's deference towards poshos so much as being charmed by them; Bertie Woosterism is much more insidious than any allegiance to Debretts.
Of course the inclination of some to turn into slobbering imbeciles in the presence of royalty is something different again.
Hugh Grant probably has a lot to do with it. The Queen is different: she corresponds to some Jungian archetype in the brain of true Englishmen, all of whom dream about having her to tea. It's not about poshness, though: true Englishmen do not have similar but slightly less exciting dreams about Chas n Mills, or any of the Dukes.
You're probably right about the Queen, I remember succumbing to something weird when we were trotted out from our primary school to wave as she passed in an open topped Roller. I was only eight, mind. I think Kingsley Amis referred in one of his letters to Larkin to how often she appeared in his dreams.
That implies that it's going to be the end of something quite deep seated and profound when HMQ finally goes.
You should have been there at the time of the Coronation! Young, good looking, woman, Naval Officer husband, small family, talking up historic role, new beginning. As I recall it WOW!
She scrubs up nice when played by the wonderful Claire Foy in The Crown. I am pretty sure she's never featured in any of my dreams, though, certainly not in one of *those* kinds of dreams...
I have never once dreamt about royalty in any of my dreams. Admittedly, I do not recall most of them, but a lot seem to involve the one were I have no clothes on and no one has noticed..... yet!!!
Now... you can argue that the Brexit campaigns never had a line in their manifesto saying "Stop the foreigners, etc" and that may well be the case, but it is really just sophistry. The Brexit campaign knew exactly where to find its support and played to the anti-foreigner gallery which is why it was often dogged during the campaign with claims of attracting racists.
Alternatively, for the week just released there was 3k of excess mortality against 4k of 'covid' deaths, and as usual journalists can't read a spreadsheet so will miss it.
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
Fascinating to know to origin of these bizarre numbers, which are all different. Was there a Whitehall sub committee back in the day which decided that screwdrivers should be 2.7% but shears 4.7% What earthly reason is there for any of this nonsense?
Scrap the lot, what on earth good does it do. It must cost a fair amount to administer. Seems phenomenally absurd, i had no idea we charged these small tariffs on random stuff.
Good news! Your imported dishwasher make 3% more margin for your retailer, and the price is merely the loss of the UK farming industry. Marvellous stuff!
UK farming voted for Brexit.
I voted for Brexit! At no point did I seriously think that would see the UK sail off the edge of the world as we're about to. I have to assume farmers were of a similar mind - free trade without the political union. Why a country who literally ruled the world thanks to free trade wants to do a unique experiment by becoming the only country in the world to stop free trade is beyond me.
I think you had to look at your fellow travellers which would have made it a trivial exercise to work out that it was going to be a shitshow. You and others on this site might have had a noble, sensible, and workable idea of Brexit, but 99.8% of the other Brexiters, and 99.9% of the Brexiters in power, or who were likely to be in power, were fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.
As you are now finding out.
That's just nonsense and beneath you.
The fruitcake, loonies and closet [or even quite open] racists were in the vicious Leave.EU grouping during the referendum.
Vote Leave made sure to do as much as they can to put clear water between the Leave.EU racists etc and themselves - and quite right too.
Tony Blair was prepared to have Jeremy Corbyn as a fellow Labour MP in his government despite knowing what he was. The Brexiteers in Vote Leave were not prepared to share a platform with Farage etc
Oh no! You're off on one of your comic black is white really it is exercises.
So it's a Peoples' Front of Judea thing is it? Vote Leave was chock full of racists while Leave.EU was pure as the driven snow. Or was it the other way round. Would be very interested to see the entry questionnaires for both organisations so that they could filter out the "right" type of leaver for each.
It was quite clearly the other way around.
Leave.EU and UKIP were the ones with bloody disgusting images like "Breaking Point" that were roundly condemned by the Vote Leave campaigners.
There are good and bad people for almost any thinking. Does the fact that there were anti-Semites who voted for Tony Blair's Labour Party make Tony Blair's government and anyone who voted for it anti-Semitic? No, that's preposterous.
A central strand of Tony Blair's Labour Party was not to discourage Jews from coming to the UK.
Exactly - though some Labour voters and even MPs wanted that, just as that was not a central strand of Brexit. Leading Brexiteers of Vote Leave were all welcoming of migration and wanted to encourage the world's best and brightest to be able to come here on an equal footing with people who just happened to hold European citizenship.
A central strand of the Brexit argument was an end to foreigners coming over here. That was overwhelmingly the argument by the leave movement. Just ask our very own @Isam here.
To say "oh but there was a group which welcomed foreigners, what? You didn't hear about them because everyone was focusing on Nigel's totemic poster but you should have been paying more attention" is naive.
You may feel uncomfortable about it - and who could blame you - but the promise to exclude foreigners was central to the Brexit victory and hence is being made good by PP.
You of all people, who was disgusted by Theresa May's purported racism, should be particularly alive to this.
You're lying or ignorant, that was never a central strand of Brexit. Find me anything, anything at all, from Vote Leave saying we need an "end to foreigners coming here".
Patel is not seeking to end people coming here either. She's liberalising much of non-EU migration and I welcome that.
@isam was a Leave.EU/Farage/UKIP voter so was part of the ostracised movement that had nothing to do with Vote Leave.
Boom! There you go with the black is white argument. Kudos.
I appreciate we all find different coping strategies for lockdown and yours is to argue persistently, vigorously, and with passion a completely nonsense position presumably to keep your mind sharp for when you go back to work.
But the comment that excluding foreigners "was never a central strand of Brexit" must be put up in the PB Hall of Fame (prop: HYUFD) as a top ten complete load of bollocks, can't fucking believe someone would actually say it comment.
I also appreciate that saying it probably makes you feel better about your decision to hitch your trailer to a racist bandwagon, having been so critical or perceived racism in the Conservative Party previously. But them's the facts.
It was never a central strand of Brexit. That is a lie, pure and simple.
As I say, if it makes you feel better please feel free to repeat this as often as you like.
If it was a central strand of Brexit you should be able to find many Vote Leave spokesmen saying they wanted an end to migration. Go ahead, be my guest and quote them like I just quoted what Patel actually said during the referendum.
If you can't trump my real quote with a real quote of your own then you are lying pure and simple. Real quote please from you or admit you're lying please.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
Yes.
If you find a quote from Gove saying "we hate foreigners" then you would have substantiated your claim.
I see you're rapidly backtracking from claiming "end migration" was "central" to Brexit, to "anti-foreigner sentiment played a role".
I never denied that anti-foreigner sentiment, a sentiment I abhor, played a role. But that's not what you were claiming. Why are you now backtracking?
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
What it suggests to me is that the R number, with which we are all currently obsessed, is largely irrelevant. It is an average for the number of people infected by those currently infected but it is completely misleading. If the research by the Turing Institute is correct many, perhaps most, who have the virus are barely infectious at all, only a risk to those with compromised immune systems and family members where there is prolonged exposure. In contrast, as in the SK nightclub case recently, some people can produce staggering quantities of the virus and infect hundreds of people in a relatively short time. The average between these two, the R number is not particularly meaningful.
What the super spreader hypothesis suggests to me is that very fast testing and indeed the app are going to be critical to coming out of lockdown safely. If a super spreader is active every hour until he or she is traced will cause another wave of infection. It continues to trouble me that the speed of testing and the app are still not available.
We also need to try and find out what makes a super spreader. If they tend to get infected early it might be a reason for the virus "burning out" as those who can spread it more rapidly diminish leaving the rest to spread the virus very slowly, if at all. If we can accelerate this process by identifying super spreaders we could have a major impact on transmission.
You are conflating 'superspreader events' with 'superspreader'.
Popped in to say this. Is it the person or is it the situation?
But it relates to R being estimated to increase across the whole population while so few people have been shown to actually have the disease.
The action that follows is similar- identify the thing responsible for most transmission and work out how to remove it as an issue.
That's the point I was making. In concentrating on the R number we are focusing on a meaningless average instead of what actually makes a difference.
Yeah, tried to make it clear was agreeing with the general point, but thought events rather than people were the issue. Sorry if it came across wrong.
R does makes nice headline figure - even if we've already repeatedly been told its too confusing.
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
Fascinating to know to origin of these bizarre numbers, which are all different. Was there a Whitehall sub committee back in the day which decided that screwdrivers should be 2.7% but shears 4.7% What earthly reason is there for any of this nonsense?
Scrap the lot, what on earth good does it do. It must cost a fair amount to administer. Seems phenomenally absurd, i had no idea we charged these small tariffs on random stuff.
Agreed.
Brussels not Whitehall. Its mental and good riddance to it.
Good news! Your imported dishwasher make 3% more margin for your retailer, and the price is merely the loss of the UK farming industry. Marvellous stuff!
UK farming voted for Brexit.
I voted for Brexit! At no point did I seriously think that would see the UK sail off the edge of the world as we're about to. I have to assume farmers were of a similar mind - free trade without the political union. Why a country who literally ruled the world thanks to free trade wants to do a unique experiment by becoming the only country in the world to stop free trade is beyond me.
I think you had to look at your fellow travellers which would have made it a trivial exercise to work out that it was going to be a shitshow. You and others on this site might have had a noble, sensible, and workable idea of Brexit, but 99.8% of the other Brexiters, and 99.9% of the Brexiters in power, or who were likely to be in power, were fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.
As you are now finding out.
That's just nonsense and beneath you.
The fruitcake, loonies and closet [or even quite open] racists were in the vicious Leave.EU grouping during the referendum.
Vote Leave made sure to do as much as they can to put clear water between the Leave.EU racists etc and themselves - and quite right too.
Tony Blair was prepared to have Jeremy Corbyn as a fellow Labour MP in his government despite knowing what he was. The Brexiteers in Vote Leave were not prepared to share a platform with Farage etc
Oh no! You're off on one of your comic black is white really it is exercises.
So it's a Peoples' Front of Judea thing is it? Vote Leave was chock full of racists while Leave.EU was pure as the driven snow. Or was it the other way round. Would be very interested to see the entry questionnaires for both organisations so that they could filter out the "right" type of leaver for each.
It was quite clearly the other way around.
Leave.EU and UKIP were the ones with bloody disgusting images like "Breaking Point" that were roundly condemned by the Vote Leave campaigners.
There are good and bad people for almost any thinking. Does the fact that there were anti-Semites who voted for Tony Blair's Labour Party make Tony Blair's government and anyone who voted for it anti-Semitic? No, that's preposterous.
A central strand of Tony Blair's Labour Party was not to discourage Jews from coming to the UK.
Exactly - though some Labour voters and even MPs wanted that, just as that was not a central strand of Brexit. Leading Brexiteers of Vote Leave were all welcoming of migration and wanted to encourage the world's best and brightest to be able to come here on an equal footing with people who just happened to hold European citizenship.
A central strand of the Brexit argument was an end to foreigners coming over here. That was overwhelmingly the argument by the leave movement. Just ask our very own @Isam here.
To say "oh but there was a group which welcomed foreigners, what? You didn't hear about them because everyone was focusing on Nigel's totemic poster but you should have been paying more attention" is naive.
You may feel uncomfortable about it - and who could blame you - but the promise to exclude foreigners was central to the Brexit victory and hence is being made good by PP.
You of all people, who was disgusted by Theresa May's purported racism, should be particularly alive to this.
You're lying or ignorant, that was never a central strand of Brexit. Find me anything, anything at all, from Vote Leave saying we need an "end to foreigners coming here".
Patel is not seeking to end people coming here either. She's liberalising much of non-EU migration and I welcome that.
@isam was a Leave.EU/Farage/UKIP voter so was part of the ostracised movement that had nothing to do with Vote Leave.
Boom! There you go with the black is white argument. Kudos.
I appreciate we all find different coping strategies for lockdown and yours is to argue persistently, vigorously, and with passion a completely nonsense position presumably to keep your mind sharp for when you go back to work.
But the comment that excluding foreigners "was never a central strand of Brexit" must be put up in the PB Hall of Fame (prop: HYUFD) as a top ten complete load of bollocks, can't fucking believe someone would actually say it comment.
I also appreciate that saying it probably makes you feel better about your decision to hitch your trailer to a racist bandwagon, having been so critical or perceived racism in the Conservative Party previously. But them's the facts.
It was never a central strand of Brexit. That is a lie, pure and simple.
As I say, if it makes you feel better please feel free to repeat this as often as you like.
If it was a central strand of Brexit you should be able to find many Vote Leave spokesmen saying they wanted an end to migration. Go ahead, be my guest and quote them like I just quoted what Patel actually said during the referendum.
If you can't trump my real quote with a real quote of your own then you are lying pure and simple. Real quote please from you or admit you're lying please.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
Yes.
If you find a quote from Gove saying "we hate foreigners" then you would have substantiated your claim.
I see you're rapidly backtracking from claiming "end migration" was "central" to Brexit, to "anti-foreigner sentiment played a role".
I never denied that anti-foreigner sentiment, a sentiment I abhor, played a role. But that's not what you were claiming. Why are you now backtracking?
It was never a central strand of Brexit. That is a lie, pure and simple.
OK, it was THE central strand of Brexit
No. It was nothing. It is a fiction of your imagination.
Philip, I have a list and you're forcing me (against my better instincts) to share. It's of the undeniables that you deny and the untenables that you tenab. Highlights as below (I've left a few out) -
Priti Patel is a social liberal. Boris Johnson did not break his promise for no border in the Irish Sea. Boris Johnson did not send a letter to the EU requesting an extension. The Brexit vote was not one iota about reducing immigration. The level of government debt does not matter if the Cons are in power. Boris Johnson looks like Daniel Craig.
This is a bit worrying. Do I have to make a Data Access Request to see your list on me?
Do I even want to??
No, it's nothing creepy. I'm just fascinated by people and things stick in my mind.
Like, let's see - with you - 'shoes' is what springs to mind. You have done more posts on shoes than any other poster.
I've a feeling that when the time comes Boris and Cummings will set up Sunak to take over. He's right out of their mould.
pfffff Brown took over from Blair and that worked out brilliantly...
Brown only took over from Blair due to politics by Brown - Blair really didn't want to leave and was probably hoping for there to be an leadership vote.
Blair was weakened considerably by the IRAQ war, Brown knew where all the bodies were buried . A deeply unpleasant man, he bullied Blair into going and we ended up in a disaster due to Brown's mismanagement of the economy. A worse PM would be hard to think of... Eden ?
Brown was terrible. But Johnson, Cameron, Blair, Major and Thatcher were worse.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
They are sore winners (like sore losers but a lot rarer)
If you find a quote from Gove saying "we hate foreigners" then you would have substantiated your claim.
I see you're rapidly backtracking from claiming "end migration" was "central" to Brexit, to "anti-foreigner sentiment played a role".
I never denied that anti-foreigner sentiment, a sentiment I abhor, played a role. But that's not what you were claiming. Why are you now backtracking?
Oh apologies. Let me backtrack the backtrack:
Ending immigration was central to Brexit.
I really don't want to go all Godwin on the thread but, from my general reading around the subject, I understand (historians please correct me) that there was no similarly "gotcha" quote or document, even after Wansee, which explicitly confirmed Hitler's intention to exterminate the Jews.
To even begin to try to deny that immigration was central to Brexit is comical but as I say, each to their own.
There will be tariffs on products we produce like cars
We don't produce cars here.
We assemble cars from parts produced elsewhere
All car factories are the same. VW don't machine all their own parts in Wolfsburg. At least one of the parts for a good number of their cars comes from where i work in Shock! Horror! the UK...
Do you ever take a day off from hating on Britain?
I've a feeling that when the time comes Boris and Cummings will set up Sunak to take over. He's right out of their mould.
pfffff Brown took over from Blair and that worked out brilliantly...
Brown only took over from Blair due to politics by Brown - Blair really didn't want to leave and was probably hoping for there to be an leadership vote.
Blair was weakened considerably by the IRAQ war, Brown knew where all the bodies were buried . A deeply unpleasant man, he bullied Blair into going and we ended up in a disaster due to Brown's mismanagement of the economy. A worse PM would be hard to think of... Eden ?
Brown was terrible. But Johnson, Cameron, Blair, Major and Thatcher were worse.
On no grounds, Brown and Eden were the worst PMs since WW2, just ahead of Callaghan, May and Heath
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
This seems an odd step. As you say these tariffs are not particularly an inhibition to trade but they will certainly be an inhibition to a free trade agreement with the EU. They cannot have a situation where goods that should bear such tariffs can be imported tariff free to the UK and then have free access to the EU. It therefore seems to be a ploy to make a FTA with the EU more difficult at a time when the negotiations are already struggling. Unhelpful.
Quite the opposite - it will make a prompt deal more attractive.
"But tariffs will remain on UK-produced cars - at 10% - and on agricultural products including lamb, beef and butter at their current levels, following concerns that these industries could be decimated by Brexit.
These new tariffs will be applied to trade with any country with which the UK has not negotiated a trade deal by the time the transition period ends on 31 December."
Don't understand the reference to UK-produced cars. If that is supposed to be non UK produced cars we are presumably saying that would apply to EU cars in the absence of a trade deal?
Its badly phrased, whoever wrote that but I understand what they were trying to say.
What they're trying to say is that goods we don't produce (dishwashers etc) are going to be permitted tariff-free, but goods we produce ourselves like cars will see tariffs for that sector.
So we are discouraging the manufacture of dishwashers in this country. Why? We urgently need import substitution to reduce our trade deficit.
Ive been saying that for years
You have indeed. And you are right. We cannot restrict our production to what we produce now. Bluntly, we just don't produce nearly enough to pay for our current standard of living.
I too like the idea of more self-sufficiency. But I'm not sure replacing cheap imports with expensive homegrown goods leads to a sustainable rise in our living standards.
Everything is a matter of degree but for the last 20 years these "cheap imports" have caused us to run a serious trade deficit with the result that we have switched from a creditor nation receiving more income from abroad than repatriated profits to a debtor nation where other countries own more and more of our assets and charge us rent for their use. In the longer term this will diminish the standard of living in this country. Indeed, it already has. So the true cost of "cheap imports" is much higher than it appears.
If we were finding better things to do than make these imports and were able to sell our skills abroad it would not matter. I don't have a particular fetish about manufacturing. But the sad truth is we don't, not by a long way. So we either accept a falling standard of living or we do something about it. Import substitution is one obvious way to address the problem but we need to improve investment, reduce consumption, improve training, education, productivity and our attitude towards engineers and applied scientists. Governments of all shades have failed to address this since the 70s. It is increasingly urgent.
Sunak and Patel's ratings make sense. Johnson's enduring popularity is just a mystery to me - I assume it's some kind of weird English class thing.
Not sure about class, but it’s definitely weird and it’s definitely an English thing.
Yes, a lot of forelock tugging still present south of the border.
How so? People say this but I cannot say I've ever really noticed much respect or deference toward upper class people. I dont rule out the possibility but it feels like one of those certainties that people rarely bother to test or prove.
I don't think it's deference towards poshos so much as being charmed by them; Bertie Woosterism is much more insidious than any allegiance to Debretts.
Of course the inclination of some to turn into slobbering imbeciles in the presence of royalty is something different again.
Hugh Grant probably has a lot to do with it. The Queen is different: she corresponds to some Jungian archetype in the brain of true Englishmen, all of whom dream about having her to tea. It's not about poshness, though: true Englishmen do not have similar but slightly less exciting dreams about Chas n Mills, or any of the Dukes.
You're probably right about the Queen, I remember succumbing to something weird when we were trotted out from our primary school to wave as she passed in an open topped Roller. I was only eight, mind. I think Kingsley Amis referred in one of his letters to Larkin to how often she appeared in his dreams.
That implies that it's going to be the end of something quite deep seated and profound when HMQ finally goes.
You should have been there at the time of the Coronation! Young, good looking, woman, Naval Officer husband, small family, talking up historic role, new beginning. As I recall it WOW!
She scrubs up nice when played by the wonderful Claire Foy in The Crown. I am pretty sure she's never featured in any of my dreams, though, certainly not in one of *those* kinds of dreams...
I have never once dreamt about royalty in any of my dreams. Admittedly, I do not recall most of them, but a lot seem to involve the one were I have no clothes on and no one has noticed..... yet!!!
I have that one. I'm usually in a meeting and panicking about it. How I go there naked goodness knows.
Another common one is people dreaming of their teeth falling out, which I have never had.
If you find a quote from Gove saying "we hate foreigners" then you would have substantiated your claim.
I see you're rapidly backtracking from claiming "end migration" was "central" to Brexit, to "anti-foreigner sentiment played a role".
I never denied that anti-foreigner sentiment, a sentiment I abhor, played a role. But that's not what you were claiming. Why are you now backtracking?
Oh apologies. Let me backtrack the backtrack:
Ending immigration was central to Brexit.
I really don't want to go all Godwin on the thread but, from my general reading around the subject, I understand (historians please correct me) that there was no similarly "gotcha" quote or document, even after Wansee, which explicitly confirmed Hitler's intention to exterminate the Jews.
To even begin to try to deny that immigration was central to Brexit is comical but as I say, each to their own.
If ending immigration was central to Brexit then please find a quote to substantiate that.
If ending immigration was central to Brexit then why were Brexiteer campaigners saying "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly"
How is saying "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" consistent with ending migration. Please explain that logic?
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
Fascinating to know to origin of these bizarre numbers, which are all different. Was there a Whitehall sub committee back in the day which decided that screwdrivers should be 2.7% but shears 4.7% What earthly reason is there for any of this nonsense?
Scrap the lot, what on earth good does it do. It must cost a fair amount to administer. Seems phenomenally absurd, i had no idea we charged these small tariffs on random stuff.
Agreed.
Brussels not Whitehall. Its mental and good riddance to it.
But.... But.... Without complex rules and regulations, what will Proper People discuss, work on, strategise?
How can you conceive of a law written on less than 10,000 sheets of A4? Are you a primitive, racist troglodyte?
A ministers red box might be readable in an hour - how can you run a country like that?
Think of the vast amount of unemployment you create?
Proper People would be reduced to thinking about second and third order effects of policy!
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
Who are all the people in A&E while we are "in the EU"?
Also note that apart from the receptionist, all the medical staff treating the woman "out of the EU" are white.
But clearly not racist, no siree.
Its not about racism. The people who'd be sent back home were white as well as black or brown...
They wouldn't be sent back home, they'd have been seen quicker so not be waiting anymore because the NHS had £350m per week more. That point was obvious.
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
Fascinating to know to origin of these bizarre numbers, which are all different. Was there a Whitehall sub committee back in the day which decided that screwdrivers should be 2.7% but shears 4.7% What earthly reason is there for any of this nonsense?
Scrap the lot, what on earth good does it do. It must cost a fair amount to administer. Seems phenomenally absurd, i had no idea we charged these small tariffs on random stuff.
The different rates, have been awarded over time to whoever paid for the lobbyists who, in tern paid, on no i mean contributed to the reelection campaign of some politician somewhere.
Good news! Your imported dishwasher make 3% more margin for your retailer, and the price is merely the loss of the UK farming industry. Marvellous stuff!
UK farming voted for Brexit.
I voted for Brexit! At no point did I seriously think that would see the UK sail off the edge of the world as we're about to. I have to assume farmers were of a similar mind - free trade without the political union. Why a country who literally ruled the world thanks to free trade wants to do a unique experiment by becoming the only country in the world to stop free trade is beyond me.
I think you had to look at your fellow travellers which would have made it a trivial exercise to work out that it was going to be a shitshow. You and others on this site might have had a noble, sensible, and workable idea of Brexit, but 99.8% of the other Brexiters, and 99.9% of the Brexiters in power, or who were likely to be in power, were fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.
As you are now finding out.
That's just nonsense and beneath you.
The fruitcake, loonies and closet [or even quite open] racists were in the vicious Leave.EU grouping during the referendum.
Vote Leave made sure to do as much as they can to put clear water between the Leave.EU racists etc and themselves - and quite right too.
Tony Blair was prepared to have Jeremy Corbyn as a fellow Labour MP in his government despite knowing what he was. The Brexiteers in Vote Leave were not prepared to share a platform with Farage etc
Oh no! You're off on one of your comic black is white really it is exercises.
So it's a Peoples' Front of Judea thing is it? Vote Leave was chock full of racists while Leave.EU was pure as the driven snow. Or was it the other way round. Would be very interested to see the entry questionnaires for both organisations so that they could filter out the "right" type of leaver for each.
It was quite clearly the other way around.
Leave.EU and UKIP were the ones with bloody disgusting images like "Breaking Point" that were roundly condemned by the Vote Leave campaigners.
There are good and bad people for almost any thinking. Does the fact that there were anti-Semites who voted for Tony Blair's Labour Party make Tony Blair's government and anyone who voted for it anti-Semitic? No, that's preposterous.
A central strand of Tony Blair's Labour Party was not to discourage Jews from coming to the UK.
Exactly - though some Labour voters and even MPs wanted that, just as that was not a central strand of Brexit. Leading Brexiteers of Vote Leave were all welcoming of migration and wanted to encourage the world's best and brightest to be able to come here on an equal footing with people who just happened to hold European citizenship.
A central strand of the Brexit argument was an end to foreigners coming over here. That was overwhelmingly the argument by the leave movement. Just ask our very own @Isam here.
To say "oh but there was a group which welcomed foreigners, what? You didn't hear about them because everyone was focusing on Nigel's totemic poster but you should have been paying more attention" is naive.
You may feel uncomfortable about it - and who could blame you - but the promise to exclude foreigners was central to the Brexit victory and hence is being made good by PP.
You of all people, who was disgusted by Theresa May's purported racism, should be particularly alive to this.
You're lying or ignorant, that was never a central strand of Brexit. Find me anything, anything at all, from Vote Leave saying we need an "end to foreigners coming here".
Patel is not seeking to end people coming here either. She's liberalising much of non-EU migration and I welcome that.
@isam was a Leave.EU/Farage/UKIP voter so was part of the ostracised movement that had nothing to do with Vote Leave.
Boom! There you go with the black is white argument. Kudos.
I appreciate we all find different coping strategies for lockdown and yours is to argue persistently, vigorously, and with passion a completely nonsense position presumably to keep your mind sharp for when you go back to work.
But the comment that excluding foreigners "was never a central strand of Brexit" must be put up in the PB Hall of Fame (prop: HYUFD) as a top ten complete load of bollocks, can't fucking believe someone would actually say it comment.
I also appreciate that saying it probably makes you feel better about your decision to hitch your trailer to a racist bandwagon, having been so critical or perceived racism in the Conservative Party previously. But them's the facts.
Wanting a points system to control immigration is not the same as banning immigration completely and evicting non UK citizens from the country
It is not you are absolutely right. But that was not the point at hand.
Brexit was won on the desire to have fewer foreigners coming to the UK and, for a subset of Brexiters, to send some of those already here back home.
A subset is not central. Thanks for proving my point.
I see today that you're speaking not just for yourself but for 'Brexiteers' (well, the nice. cuddly, non-racist ones). Very confusing..
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
Good news! Your imported dishwasher make 3% more margin for your retailer, and the price is merely the loss of the UK farming industry. Marvellous stuff!
UK farming voted for Brexit.
I voted for Brexit! At no point did I seriously think that would see the UK sail off the edge of the world as we're about to. I have to assume farmers were of a similar mind - free trade without the political union. Why a country who literally ruled the world thanks to free trade wants to do a unique experiment by becoming the only country in the world to stop free trade is beyond me.
I think you had to look at your fellow travellers which would have made it a trivial exercise to work out that it was going to be a shitshow. You and others on this site might have had a noble, sensible, and workable idea of Brexit, but 99.8% of the other Brexiters, and 99.9% of the Brexiters in power, or who were likely to be in power, were fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.
As you are now finding out.
That's just nonsense and beneath you.
The fruitcake, loonies and closet [or even quite open] racists were in the vicious Leave.EU grouping during the referendum.
Vote Leave made sure to do as much as they can to put clear water between the Leave.EU racists etc and themselves - and quite right too.
Tony Blair was prepared to have Jeremy Corbyn as a fellow Labour MP in his government despite knowing what he was. The Brexiteers in Vote Leave were not prepared to share a platform with Farage etc
Oh no! You're off on one of your comic black is white really it is exercises.
So it's a Peoples' Front of Judea thing is it? Vote Leave was chock full of racists while Leave.EU was pure as the driven snow. Or was it the other way round. Would be very interested to see the entry questionnaires for both organisations so that they could filter out the "right" type of leaver for each.
It was quite clearly the other way around.
Leave.EU and UKIP were the ones with bloody disgusting images like "Breaking Point" that were roundly condemned by the Vote Leave campaigners.
There are good and bad people for almost any thinking. Does the fact that there were anti-Semites who voted for Tony Blair's Labour Party make Tony Blair's government and anyone who voted for it anti-Semitic? No, that's preposterous.
A central strand of Tony Blair's Labour Party was not to discourage Jews from coming to the UK.
Exactly - though some Labour voters and even MPs wanted that, just as that was not a central strand of Brexit. Leading Brexiteers of Vote Leave were all welcoming of migration and wanted to encourage the world's best and brightest to be able to come here on an equal footing with people who just happened to hold European citizenship.
A central strand of the Brexit argument was an end to foreigners coming over here. That was overwhelmingly the argument by the leave movement. Just ask our very own @Isam here.
To say "oh but there was a group which welcomed foreigners, what? You didn't hear about them because everyone was focusing on Nigel's totemic poster but you should have been paying more attention" is naive.
You may feel uncomfortable about it - and who could blame you - but the promise to exclude foreigners was central to the Brexit victory and hence is being made good by PP.
You of all people, who was disgusted by Theresa May's purported racism, should be particularly alive to this.
You're lying or ignorant, that was never a central strand of Brexit. Find me anything, anything at all, from Vote Leave saying we need an "end to foreigners coming here".
Patel is not seeking to end people coming here either. She's liberalising much of non-EU migration and I welcome that.
@isam was a Leave.EU/Farage/UKIP voter so was part of the ostracised movement that had nothing to do with Vote Leave.
Boom! There you go with the black is white argument. Kudos.
I appreciate we all find different coping strategies for lockdown and yours is to argue persistently, vigorously, and with passion a completely nonsense position presumably to keep your mind sharp for when you go back to work.
But the comment that excluding foreigners "was never a central strand of Brexit" must be put up in the PB Hall of Fame (prop: HYUFD) as a top ten complete load of bollocks, can't fucking believe someone would actually say it comment.
I also appreciate that saying it probably makes you feel better about your decision to hitch your trailer to a racist bandwagon, having been so critical or perceived racism in the Conservative Party previously. But them's the facts.
Wanting a points system to control immigration is not the same as banning immigration completely and evicting non UK citizens from the country
It is not you are absolutely right. But that was not the point at hand.
Brexit was won on the desire to have fewer foreigners coming to the UK and, for a subset of Brexiters, to send some of those already here back home.
A subset is not central. Thanks for proving my point.
I see today that you're speaking not just for yourself but for 'Brexiteers' (well, the nice. cuddly, non-racist ones). Very confusing..
No - I'm not speaking for 'Brexiteers'. I'm quoting them.
If you find a quote from Gove saying "we hate foreigners" then you would have substantiated your claim.
I see you're rapidly backtracking from claiming "end migration" was "central" to Brexit, to "anti-foreigner sentiment played a role".
I never denied that anti-foreigner sentiment, a sentiment I abhor, played a role. But that's not what you were claiming. Why are you now backtracking?
Oh apologies. Let me backtrack the backtrack:
Ending immigration was central to Brexit.
I really don't want to go all Godwin on the thread but, from my general reading around the subject, I understand (historians please correct me) that there was no similarly "gotcha" quote or document, even after Wansee, which explicitly confirmed Hitler's intention to exterminate the Jews.
To even begin to try to deny that immigration was central to Brexit is comical but as I say, each to their own.
If ending immigration was central to Brexit then please find a quote to substantiate that.
If ending immigration was central to Brexit then why were Brexiteer campaigners saying "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly"
How is saying "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" consistent with ending migration. Please explain that logic?
So Priti Patel is the lone flag waver proving, if proof be needed, that Brexit was not about stopping so many foreigners coming to this country.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
Immigration was an issue.
"Ending immigration" was not.
LOL x2.
That depends on what your definition of the word is is.
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
Fascinating to know to origin of these bizarre numbers, which are all different. Was there a Whitehall sub committee back in the day which decided that screwdrivers should be 2.7% but shears 4.7% What earthly reason is there for any of this nonsense?
Scrap the lot, what on earth good does it do. It must cost a fair amount to administer. Seems phenomenally absurd, i had no idea we charged these small tariffs on random stuff.
Pretty sure these are EU tariffs not UK ones (although they apply to us so long as we are in the Customs Union).
Who are all the people in A&E while we are "in the EU"?
Also note that apart from the receptionist, all the medical staff treating the woman "out of the EU" are white.
But clearly not racist, no siree.
Its not about racism. The people who'd be sent back home were white as well as black or brown...
They wouldn't be sent back home, they'd have been seen quicker so not be waiting anymore because the NHS had £350m per week more. That point was obvious.
If EU citizens here do not fill in the correct paperwork then they will indeed be sent back home.
cf Windrush.
Edit: non-UK EU citizens, obvs.
Edit x2: UK EU citizens will be sent back to Hartlepool.
Sunak and Patel's ratings make sense. Johnson's enduring popularity is just a mystery to me - I assume it's some kind of weird English class thing.
Not sure about class, but it’s definitely weird and it’s definitely an English thing.
Yes, a lot of forelock tugging still present south of the border.
How so? People say this but I cannot say I've ever really noticed much respect or deference toward upper class people. I dont rule out the possibility but it feels like one of those certainties that people rarely bother to test or prove.
I don't think it's deference towards poshos so much as being charmed by them; Bertie Woosterism is much more insidious than any allegiance to Debretts.
Of course the inclination of some to turn into slobbering imbeciles in the presence of royalty is something different again.
Hugh Grant probably has a lot to do with it. The Queen is different: she corresponds to some Jungian archetype in the brain of true Englishmen, all of whom dream about having her to tea. It's not about poshness, though: true Englishmen do not have similar but slightly less exciting dreams about Chas n Mills, or any of the Dukes.
You're probably right about the Queen, I remember succumbing to something weird when we were trotted out from our primary school to wave as she passed in an open topped Roller. I was only eight, mind. I think Kingsley Amis referred in one of his letters to Larkin to how often she appeared in his dreams.
That implies that it's going to be the end of something quite deep seated and profound when HMQ finally goes.
You should have been there at the time of the Coronation! Young, good looking, woman, Naval Officer husband, small family, talking up historic role, new beginning. As I recall it WOW!
She scrubs up nice when played by the wonderful Claire Foy in The Crown. I am pretty sure she's never featured in any of my dreams, though, certainly not in one of *those* kinds of dreams...
I have never once dreamt about royalty in any of my dreams. Admittedly, I do not recall most of them, but a lot seem to involve the one were I have no clothes on and no one has noticed..... yet!!!
I have that one. I'm usually in a meeting and panicking about it. How I go there naked goodness knows.
Another common one is people dreaming of their teeth falling out, which I have never had.
I mean - why?
I never dreamt about my teeth falling out, but COVID-19 has claimed one of my molars after the filling came out and no dentist was available
(I have heard it rumoured that there are emergency dentists. I did not locate one, but I found a few hen's teeth......)
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
Immigration was an issue.
"Ending immigration" was not.
LOL x2.
That depends on what your definition of the word is is.
I think the definition of "ending" is quite clear but if you have some newfangled definition that makes "ending immigration" consistent with "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" then I'd love to hear it.
Please explain how you reconcile "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" with "ending immigration".
In my eyes "ending immigration" would be a system that does not let the brightest and the best in from around the world, but if you have a different definition please explain it.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
I remember the stories from February when a few locals were upset that the local foreigners hadn't gone home.
If you find a quote from Gove saying "we hate foreigners" then you would have substantiated your claim.
I see you're rapidly backtracking from claiming "end migration" was "central" to Brexit, to "anti-foreigner sentiment played a role".
I never denied that anti-foreigner sentiment, a sentiment I abhor, played a role. But that's not what you were claiming. Why are you now backtracking?
Oh apologies. Let me backtrack the backtrack:
Ending immigration was central to Brexit.
I really don't want to go all Godwin on the thread but, from my general reading around the subject, I understand (historians please correct me) that there was no similarly "gotcha" quote or document, even after Wansee, which explicitly confirmed Hitler's intention to exterminate the Jews.
To even begin to try to deny that immigration was central to Brexit is comical but as I say, each to their own.
If ending immigration was central to Brexit then please find a quote to substantiate that.
If ending immigration was central to Brexit then why were Brexiteer campaigners saying "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly"
How is saying "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" consistent with ending migration. Please explain that logic?
So Priti Patel is the lone flag waver proving, if proof be needed, that Brexit was not about stopping so many foreigners coming to this country.
Irony surely is dead.
She wasn't lone. Everyone in Vote Leave was the same.
"Stopping so many foreigners coming to this country" was the policy of David Cameron and Theresa May, a policy I opposed when they had it.
Everything is a matter of degree but for the last 20 years these "cheap imports" have caused us to run a serious trade deficit with the result that we have switched from a creditor nation receiving more income from abroad than repatriated profits to a debtor nation where other countries own more and more of our assets and charge us rent for their use.
Surely this is more the issue than "cheap imports"? Our desire for a quick buck and selling anything to anyone regardless of its impact on the country?
The UK is all fur coat and no knickers now. We have flogged almost everything of value to whoever waves the most cash around.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
I remember the stories from February when a few locals were upset that the local foreigners hadn't gone home.
Idiots.
I wonder if they voted for David Cameron who twice put reducing immigration into his manifesto?
They wouldn't be sent back home, they'd have been seen quicker so not be waiting anymore because the NHS had £350m per week more. That point was obvious.
Oh, the point of the advert was blindingly obvious, to everyone, apart from you it seems.
She goes to the same hospital, the same receptionist signs her in, and she is seen immediately by the all white medical staff because the waiting room has been purged of all the "others"
What it suggests to me is that the R number, with which we are all currently obsessed, is largely irrelevant. It is an average for the number of people infected by those currently infected but it is completely misleading. If the research by the Turing Institute is correct many, perhaps most, who have the virus are barely infectious at all, only a risk to those with compromised immune systems and family members where there is prolonged exposure. In contrast, as in the SK nightclub case recently, some people can produce staggering quantities of the virus and infect hundreds of people in a relatively short time. The average between these two, the R number is not particularly meaningful.
What the super spreader hypothesis suggests to me is that very fast testing and indeed the app are going to be critical to coming out of lockdown safely. If a super spreader is active every hour until he or she is traced will cause another wave of infection. It continues to trouble me that the speed of testing and the app are still not available.
We also need to try and find out what makes a super spreader. If they tend to get infected early it might be a reason for the virus "burning out" as those who can spread it more rapidly diminish leaving the rest to spread the virus very slowly, if at all. If we can accelerate this process by identifying super spreaders we could have a major impact on transmission.
You are conflating 'superspreader events' with 'superspreader'.
Popped in to say this. Is it the person or is it the situation?
But it relates to R being estimated to increase across the whole population while so few people have been shown to actually have the disease.
The action that follows is similar- identify the thing responsible for most transmission and work out how to remove it as an issue.
That's the point I was making. In concentrating on the R number we are focusing on a meaningless average instead of what actually makes a difference.
Yeah, tried to make it clear was agreeing with the general point, but thought events rather than people were the issue. Sorry if it came across wrong.
R does makes nice headline figure - even if we've already repeatedly been told its too confusing.
IANAE but I can't help feeling that epidemiology is being shown up to be very much a Cinderella science. From the absurdly simplistic exponential models indicating that pretty much everyone in the world would have the virus by now, to the repeated mistakes about who is infectious, when they are infectious, how long they are infectious, what lockdown steps work and what don't, how transmission actually occurs, the relevance of the R number etc, etc. The government says it follows the science and it has little option but to do so but am I alone in thinking much of the science has proven not to be very good?
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
Actually, no, I don't think it's helpful top conflate concern over excessively high levels of immigration with anti-foreigner sentiment. It can be a sign of anti-foreigner sentiment, or more frequently anti-foreigner sentiment can often arise as a result of the strains of excessive immigration, but it is a big mistake to conflate the two.
Now... you can argue that the Brexit campaigns never had a line in their manifesto saying "Stop the foreigners, etc" and that may well be the case, but it is really just sophistry. The Brexit campaign knew exactly where to find its support and played to the anti-foreigner gallery which is why it was often dogged during the campaign with claims of attracting racists.
That advert has nothing to do with immigration and is about the £350m for the NHS idea.
My natural inclination with a lot of "that's racist" is to give the makers the benefit of the doubt. Usually it's either not, or it's unintentional.
This ad, however, is clearly racist. While there were many reasons for voting Brexit, immigration control was always high in the reasons people gave, so there's no excuse for not being aware of the impact race has on ads.
There are prominent patients in the "Inside EU" ad who aren't white, but they're not shown in the "outside EU ad", while that split screen of reception staff, is about as blatant as you can get.
It might be possible to make an ad like this unintentionally, if you're totally tone deaf when it comes to race, but in the context of the Brexit debate it's clearly been planned.
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
Fascinating to know to origin of these bizarre numbers, which are all different. Was there a Whitehall sub committee back in the day which decided that screwdrivers should be 2.7% but shears 4.7% What earthly reason is there for any of this nonsense?
Scrap the lot, what on earth good does it do. It must cost a fair amount to administer. Seems phenomenally absurd, i had no idea we charged these small tariffs on random stuff.
Pretty sure these are EU tariffs not UK ones (although they apply to us so long as we are in the Customs Union).
Quite sure we had complex, counterproductive tariff nonsense before the EU. The EU regulations and rules found a happy home in the minds of those who adiore complexity.
I had an interesting time when I tried to bring up the different tariffs on components vs completed electronic items with my MP. Poking a nest of lawyers, policy makers, policy wonks, policy screwer-uppers...
They wouldn't be sent back home, they'd have been seen quicker so not be waiting anymore because the NHS had £350m per week more. That point was obvious.
Oh, the point of the advert was blindingly obvious, to everyone, apart from you it seems.
She goes to the same hospital, the same receptionist signs her in, and she is seen immediately by the all white medical staff because the waiting room has been purged of all the "others"
It was blindingly obvious to everyone.
She is seen immediately by the medical staff because the NHS has £350mn more a week thus the "others" as you put it have already been treated. Just as whoever arrives after her won't be seeing her in the waiting room.
Idiot. If you're too thick to understand that then don't cry racism.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
Immigration was an issue.
"Ending immigration" was not.
LOL x2.
That depends on what your definition of the word is is.
I think the definition of "ending" is quite clear but if you have some newfangled definition that makes "ending immigration" consistent with "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" then I'd love to hear it.
Please explain how you reconcile "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" with "ending immigration".
In my eyes "ending immigration" would be a system that does not let the brightest and the best in from around the world, but if you have a different definition please explain it.
"In your eyes" - of course. Because you are not a racist.
What do you think those people who cited "immigration" as their primary reason for voting Leave thought about immigration?
Everything is a matter of degree but for the last 20 years these "cheap imports" have caused us to run a serious trade deficit with the result that we have switched from a creditor nation receiving more income from abroad than repatriated profits to a debtor nation where other countries own more and more of our assets and charge us rent for their use.
Surely this is more the issue than "cheap imports"? Our desire for a quick buck and selling anything to anyone regardless of its impact on the country?
The UK is all fur coat and no knickers now. We have flogged almost everything of value to whoever waves the most cash around.
And a partial solution is to get back into knicker manufacturing. It will save a lot of embarrassment in the long run.
I've a feeling that when the time comes Boris and Cummings will set up Sunak to take over. He's right out of their mould.
pfffff Brown took over from Blair and that worked out brilliantly...
Brown only took over from Blair due to politics by Brown - Blair really didn't want to leave and was probably hoping for there to be an leadership vote.
Blair was weakened considerably by the IRAQ war, Brown knew where all the bodies were buried . A deeply unpleasant man, he bullied Blair into going and we ended up in a disaster due to Brown's mismanagement of the economy. A worse PM would be hard to think of... Eden ?
Brown was terrible. But Johnson, Cameron, Blair, Major and Thatcher were worse.
On no grounds, Brown and Eden were the worst PMs since WW2, just ahead of Callaghan, May and Heath
What about Churchill (in the 50s) and Douglas-Home?
It was never a central strand of Brexit. That is a lie, pure and simple.
OK, it was THE central strand of Brexit
No. It was nothing. It is a fiction of your imagination.
Philip, I have a list and you're forcing me (against my better instincts) to share. It's of the undeniables that you deny and the untenables that you tenab. Highlights as below (I've left a few out) -
Priti Patel is a social liberal. Boris Johnson did not break his promise for no border in the Irish Sea. Boris Johnson did not send a letter to the EU requesting an extension. The Brexit vote was not one iota about reducing immigration. The level of government debt does not matter if the Cons are in power. Boris Johnson looks like Daniel Craig.
This is a bit worrying. Do I have to make a Data Access Request to see your list on me?
Do I even want to??
No, it's nothing creepy. I'm just fascinated by people and things stick in my mind.
Like, let's see - with you - 'shoes' is what springs to mind. You have done more posts on shoes than any other poster.
I was assisted by Plato. Since her demise, I rarely do shoe posts these days....
Public enquiry will find that we didn't have perfect information in an unprecedented and extremely fast moving situation, and that with hindsight some mistakes were made, and some will likely have been avoidable.
Rational people will not find any of this surprising or scandalous and will thank their lucky stars they weren't in charge themselves as it was an absolute nightmare.
She is seen immediately by the medical staff because the NHS has £350mn more a week thus the "others" as you put it have already been treated.
Funding changes the speed at which A&E patients can be treated? Faster setting plaster for breakages? High speed X-rays? Higher paid doctors diagnose faster? Blood clots quicker with more money?
Drinking this early in the day is bad for you. Maybe you should lie down for a bit
There will be tariffs on products we produce like cars
We don't produce cars here.
We assemble cars from parts produced elsewhere
All car factories are the same. VW don't machine all their own parts in Wolfsburg. At least one of the parts for a good number of their cars comes from where i work in Shock! Horror! the UK...
Do you ever take a day off from hating on Britain?
Its a given that PBers who have never worked in the automotive sector insist they know more about it than people who have.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
Immigration was an issue.
"Ending immigration" was not.
LOL x2.
That depends on what your definition of the word is is.
I think the definition of "ending" is quite clear but if you have some newfangled definition that makes "ending immigration" consistent with "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" then I'd love to hear it.
Please explain how you reconcile "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" with "ending immigration".
In my eyes "ending immigration" would be a system that does not let the brightest and the best in from around the world, but if you have a different definition please explain it.
"In your eyes" - of course. Because you are not a racist.
What do you think those people who cited "immigration" as their primary reason for voting Leave thought about immigration?
I don't care about them.
I care about the politicians who would have to implement it and the rights or wrongs of the decision. That's why quoting the politicians is what matters. Politicians who want to let in the best and brightest is a good thing.
What it suggests to me is that the R number, with which we are all currently obsessed, is largely irrelevant. It is an average for the number of people infected by those currently infected but it is completely misleading. If the research by the Turing Institute is correct many, perhaps most, who have the virus are barely infectious at all, only a risk to those with compromised immune systems and family members where there is prolonged exposure. In contrast, as in the SK nightclub case recently, some people can produce staggering quantities of the virus and infect hundreds of people in a relatively short time. The average between these two, the R number is not particularly meaningful.
What the super spreader hypothesis suggests to me is that very fast testing and indeed the app are going to be critical to coming out of lockdown safely. If a super spreader is active every hour until he or she is traced will cause another wave of infection. It continues to trouble me that the speed of testing and the app are still not available.
We also need to try and find out what makes a super spreader. If they tend to get infected early it might be a reason for the virus "burning out" as those who can spread it more rapidly diminish leaving the rest to spread the virus very slowly, if at all. If we can accelerate this process by identifying super spreaders we could have a major impact on transmission.
You are conflating 'superspreader events' with 'superspreader'.
Popped in to say this. Is it the person or is it the situation?
But it relates to R being estimated to increase across the whole population while so few people have been shown to actually have the disease.
The action that follows is similar- identify the thing responsible for most transmission and work out how to remove it as an issue.
That's the point I was making. In concentrating on the R number we are focusing on a meaningless average instead of what actually makes a difference.
Yeah, tried to make it clear was agreeing with the general point, but thought events rather than people were the issue. Sorry if it came across wrong.
R does makes nice headline figure - even if we've already repeatedly been told its too confusing.
IANAE but I can't help feeling that epidemiology is being shown up to be very much a Cinderella science. From the absurdly simplistic exponential models indicating that pretty much everyone in the world would have the virus by now, to the repeated mistakes about who is infectious, when they are infectious, how long they are infectious, what lockdown steps work and what don't, how transmission actually occurs, the relevance of the R number etc, etc. The government says it follows the science and it has little option but to do so but am I alone in thinking much of the science has proven not to be very good?
Working with dirty incomplete data in a fast moving situation. That is why I think a Royal Commission or similar is needed to genuinely learn lessons and why I am contemptuous of premature, agenda driven, benefit of current state of hindsight analysis.
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
This seems an odd step. As you say these tariffs are not particularly an inhibition to trade but they will certainly be an inhibition to a free trade agreement with the EU. They cannot have a situation where goods that should bear such tariffs can be imported tariff free to the UK and then have free access to the EU. It therefore seems to be a ploy to make a FTA with the EU more difficult at a time when the negotiations are already struggling. Unhelpful.
Quite the opposite - it will make a prompt deal more attractive.
"But tariffs will remain on UK-produced cars - at 10% - and on agricultural products including lamb, beef and butter at their current levels, following concerns that these industries could be decimated by Brexit.
These new tariffs will be applied to trade with any country with which the UK has not negotiated a trade deal by the time the transition period ends on 31 December."
Don't understand the reference to UK-produced cars. If that is supposed to be non UK produced cars we are presumably saying that would apply to EU cars in the absence of a trade deal?
Its badly phrased, whoever wrote that but I understand what they were trying to say.
What they're trying to say is that goods we don't produce (dishwashers etc) are going to be permitted tariff-free, but goods we produce ourselves like cars will see tariffs for that sector.
So we are discouraging the manufacture of dishwashers in this country. Why? We urgently need import substitution to reduce our trade deficit.
Ive been saying that for years
You have indeed. And you are right. We cannot restrict our production to what we produce now. Bluntly, we just don't produce nearly enough to pay for our current standard of living.
I too like the idea of more self-sufficiency. But I'm not sure replacing cheap imports with expensive homegrown goods leads to a sustainable rise in our living standards.
Everything is a matter of degree but for the last 20 years these "cheap imports" have caused us to run a serious trade deficit with the result that we have switched from a creditor nation receiving more income from abroad than repatriated profits to a debtor nation where other countries own more and more of our assets and charge us rent for their use. In the longer term this will diminish the standard of living in this country. Indeed, it already has. So the true cost of "cheap imports" is much higher than it appears.
If we were finding better things to do than make these imports and were able to sell our skills abroad it would not matter. I don't have a particular fetish about manufacturing. But the sad truth is we don't, not by a long way. So we either accept a falling standard of living or we do something about it. Import substitution is one obvious way to address the problem but we need to improve investment, reduce consumption, improve training, education, productivity and our attitude towards engineers and applied scientists. Governments of all shades have failed to address this since the 70s. It is increasingly urgent.
I do agree with much of what you say here. But classic trade theory says that if things are made where it is cheapest to do so, it leads to an optimum material result for the whole. Of course this neglects incredibly important issues such as wealth distribution and environmental concerns. But that is the theory driving globalization and I believe it is widely accepted to be true. Meaning that if the process is reversed the world will be the (materially) poorer for it. Perhaps we can get richer in a world getting poorer, as opposed to (as now) getting poorer in one getting richer - talking relative rather than absolute - but my sense is it will be a big ask.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
was that people in Cornwall telling Londoners to sod off home ?
I remember the stories from February when a few locals were upset that the local foreigners hadn't gone home.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
Actually, no, I don't think it's helpful top conflate concern over excessively high levels of immigration with anti-foreigner sentiment. It can be a sign of anti-foreigner sentiment, or more frequently anti-foreigner sentiment can often arise as a result of the strains of excessive immigration, but it is a big mistake to conflate the two.
Aren't immigrants usually foreigners, Richard? Let's see if the examples you give work if we swap the two words.
She is seen immediately by the medical staff because the NHS has £350mn more a week thus the "others" as you put it have already been treated.
Funding changes the speed at which A&E patients can be treated? Faster setting plaster for breakages? High speed X-rays? Higher paid doctors diagnose faster? Blood clots quicker with more money?
Drinking this early in the day is bad for you. Maybe you should lie down for a bit
Yes funding does change the speed at which A&E patients can be treated.
Waiting is due to lack of capacity, not because while you were waiting to be seen the x-ray machine you haven't been to yet was busy with your x-ray.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
Immigration was an issue.
"Ending immigration" was not.
LOL x2.
That depends on what your definition of the word is is.
I think the definition of "ending" is quite clear but if you have some newfangled definition that makes "ending immigration" consistent with "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" then I'd love to hear it.
Please explain how you reconcile "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" with "ending immigration".
In my eyes "ending immigration" would be a system that does not let the brightest and the best in from around the world, but if you have a different definition please explain it.
"In your eyes" - of course. Because you are not a racist.
What do you think those people who cited "immigration" as their primary reason for voting Leave thought about immigration?
I don't care about them.
I care about the politicians who would have to implement it and the rights or wrongs of the decision. That's why quoting the politicians is what matters. Politicians who want to let in the best and brightest is a good thing.
It may well be. But if I may return to the point of our discussion: anti-foreigner feeling (or, if you want to sugar coat it a la @Richard_Nabavi, anti-excessive immigration feeling) was a central strand of the Brexit vote.
There will be tariffs on products we produce like cars
We don't produce cars here.
We assemble cars from parts produced elsewhere
All car factories are the same. VW don't machine all their own parts in Wolfsburg. At least one of the parts for a good number of their cars comes from where i work in Shock! Horror! the UK...
Do you ever take a day off from hating on Britain?
Its a given that PBers who have never worked in the automotive sector insist they know more about it than people who have.
Of course. Have you seen the recent threads on Epidemiology and the older extensive ones on Economics and International Relations (aka Brexit)?
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
was that people in Cornwall telling Londoners to sod off home ?
I remember the stories from February when a few locals were upset that the local foreigners hadn't gone home.
Then again, I always find it interesting that free movement advocates have limits. A funny hobby is poking such people to reveal what kind of immigrants they don't want. It is rather revealing.
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
Fascinating to know to origin of these bizarre numbers, which are all different. Was there a Whitehall sub committee back in the day which decided that screwdrivers should be 2.7% but shears 4.7% What earthly reason is there for any of this nonsense?
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
This seems an odd step. As you say these tariffs are not particularly an inhibition to trade but they will certainly be an inhibition to a free trade agreement with the EU. They cannot have a situation where goods that should bear such tariffs can be imported tariff free to the UK and then have free access to the EU. It therefore seems to be a ploy to make a FTA with the EU more difficult at a time when the negotiations are already struggling. Unhelpful.
Quite the opposite - it will make a prompt deal more attractive.
"But tariffs will remain on UK-produced cars - at 10% - and on agricultural products including lamb, beef and butter at their current levels, following concerns that these industries could be decimated by Brexit.
These new tariffs will be applied to trade with any country with which the UK has not negotiated a trade deal by the time the transition period ends on 31 December."
Don't understand the reference to UK-produced cars. If that is supposed to be non UK produced cars we are presumably saying that would apply to EU cars in the absence of a trade deal?
Its badly phrased, whoever wrote that but I understand what they were trying to say.
What they're trying to say is that goods we don't produce (dishwashers etc) are going to be permitted tariff-free, but goods we produce ourselves like cars will see tariffs for that sector.
So we are discouraging the manufacture of dishwashers in this country. Why? We urgently need import substitution to reduce our trade deficit.
Ive been saying that for years
You have indeed. And you are right. We cannot restrict our production to what we produce now. Bluntly, we just don't produce nearly enough to pay for our current standard of living.
I too like the idea of more self-sufficiency. But I'm not sure replacing cheap imports with expensive homegrown goods leads to a sustainable rise in our living standards.
Everything is a matter of degree but for the last 20 years these "cheap imports" have caused us to run a serious trade deficit with the result that we have switched from a creditor nation receiving more income from abroad than repatriated profits to a debtor nation where other countries own more and more of our assets and charge us rent for their use. In the longer term this will diminish the standard of living in this country. Indeed, it already has. So the true cost of "cheap imports" is much higher than it appears.
If we were finding better things to do than make these imports and were able to sell our skills abroad it would not matter. I don't have a particular fetish about manufacturing. But the sad truth is we don't, not by a long way. So we either accept a falling standard of living or we do something about it. Import substitution is one obvious way to address the problem but we need to improve investment, reduce consumption, improve training, education, productivity and our attitude towards engineers and applied scientists. Governments of all shades have failed to address this since the 70s. It is increasingly urgent.
I do agree with much of what you say here. But classic trade theory says that if things are made where it is cheapest to do so, it leads to an optimum material result for the whole. Of course this neglects incredibly important issues such as wealth distribution and environmental concerns. But that is the theory driving globalization and I believe it is widely accepted to be true. Meaning that if the process is reversed the world will be the (materially) poorer for it. Perhaps we can get richer in a world getting poorer, as opposed to (as now) getting poorer in one getting richer - talking relative rather than absolute - but my sense is it will be a big ask.
Where's the benefit in making Jeff Bezos richer and Hartlepool poorer ? Free trade works for the benefit of the local hegemon. We lost that position 100 years ago. Now it's questionable if it is in our interest.
What Marshall Plan aid is the UK expecting at this stage? The UK Government is now out of tools to really push new industries and letting the old ones die, with the associated costs of unemployment etc. will only exacerbate the problems. The only great leap forward that will come here will resemble the one Mao tried...
It's Brexit innit? Somefink will turn up. Youll see.....
I 'ad that Boris Johnson in the back of my cab once.
(PS - Welcome aboard Mr/Ms ExTory)
Thanks for that Beibheirli, I've been a lurker for over 10 years now and thought I'd join the party rather than shout at the screen any more.
Welcome. And you might be interested to know that your username has prompted me to examine very carefully my Conservative Party membership, the renewal of which is due this June.
I huffed and puffed when Boris became leader but then I had Jezza as a backstop. The only reason for continuing my membership would be because I think that the economy will be better managed by the Conservatives. That is something I am unsure of atm and of course CV-19 further muddies the water.
I certainly know that the Cons Party is now full of MPs who I have very little in common with ideologically.
It wasn't an easy decision for me as I'd been a member since I turned 18 in 2004 and it certainly happened in stages.
I liked the people in Croydon Central and enjoyed canvassing in 2017, even if things didn't go quite to plan... I think the major change for me was when TMay announced that the plan was to leave the Customs Union and the Single Market. Before I'd understood the political element but when the whole thing evolved into economic vandalism, especially without there being any sort of equivalent trading arrangement for the UK to move into, I know the lunatics had taken the asylum.
Finally when my membership reminder came around I felt that I'd rather save the money than hand it over to a party I didn't recognise anymore and couldn't defend. I haven't voted for them since and doubt I will for a decade until centrifugal forces drive out the extremists and the party becomes moderate and leads in that way. They don't own my vote and I think the country would be in a better place if the Tories and the Labour Party didn't own voters the way they do.
As for Brexit, its the death spasm of the baby boomers and the people they do the thinking for. Its a shame that their death throes will damage the UK as much as it will, potentially ending it, but there is no greater lesson learned than the one learned through experience.
It's nice to have a progressive immigration policy at last. Hard to fault the government implementing what the majority of the public (leave or remain) seem to want.
There will be tariffs on products we produce like cars
We don't produce cars here.
We assemble cars from parts produced elsewhere
All car factories are the same. VW don't machine all their own parts in Wolfsburg. At least one of the parts for a good number of their cars comes from where i work in Shock! Horror! the UK...
Do you ever take a day off from hating on Britain?
Its a given that PBers who have never worked in the automotive sector insist they know more about it than people who have.
Of course. Have you seen the recent threads on Epidemiology and the older extensive ones on Economics and International Relations (aka Brexit)?
Yes, I wrap that up as English Middle Class Bollocks, I get it when I go home to the other half and just laugh at her.
I've a feeling that when the time comes Boris and Cummings will set up Sunak to take over. He's right out of their mould.
pfffff Brown took over from Blair and that worked out brilliantly...
Brown only took over from Blair due to politics by Brown - Blair really didn't want to leave and was probably hoping for there to be an leadership vote.
Blair was weakened considerably by the IRAQ war, Brown knew where all the bodies were buried . A deeply unpleasant man, he bullied Blair into going and we ended up in a disaster due to Brown's mismanagement of the economy. A worse PM would be hard to think of... Eden ?
Brown was terrible. But Johnson, Cameron, Blair, Major and Thatcher were worse.
On no grounds, Brown and Eden were the worst PMs since WW2, just ahead of Callaghan, May and Heath
What about Churchill (in the 50s) and Douglas-Home?
Churchill was drunk most of the time, no? His Cabinet got on with things without him, which on the whole wasn't a bad thing.
D-Home was out of touch rather than incompetent, and he didn't last long.
Brown would be bottom of a pretty undistinguished bunch were it not for his handling of the financial crisis. Blair is almost a mirror image - would be close to the top but for Iraq.
Looking at the whole motley crew, you have to say we have not been overly blessed with gifted leaders. Maybe there is something wrong with the system.
Celebrating treating people "based on their skills, not where they're from" is a very good thing.
Or would you rather treat people based on where they're from, not their skills?
We are losing freedoms. That is the point. As from 1st January 2021, UK businesses and citizens (who do not hold dual nationality) will enjoy fewer freedoms than they do today.
I mean there are a zillion surveys about this but you want me to find Michael Gove saying "we hate foreigners"?
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
The curious thing about this argument is that reducing the excessive level of immigration into the UK was in fact the only positive and respectable argument the Leave campaign had.
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
"Immigration" was critical as an issue motivating the leave vote.
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
Immigration was an issue.
"Ending immigration" was not.
LOL x2.
That depends on what your definition of the word is is.
I think the definition of "ending" is quite clear but if you have some newfangled definition that makes "ending immigration" consistent with "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" then I'd love to hear it.
Please explain how you reconcile "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" with "ending immigration".
In my eyes "ending immigration" would be a system that does not let the brightest and the best in from around the world, but if you have a different definition please explain it.
"In your eyes" - of course. Because you are not a racist.
What do you think those people who cited "immigration" as their primary reason for voting Leave thought about immigration?
I don't care about them.
I care about the politicians who would have to implement it and the rights or wrongs of the decision. That's why quoting the politicians is what matters. Politicians who want to let in the best and brightest is a good thing.
It may well be. But if I may return to the point of our discussion: anti-foreigner feeling (or, if you want to sugar coat it a la @Richard_Nabavi, anti-excessive immigration feeling) was a central strand of the Brexit vote.
I can agree Mr Nabavi. I don't like that but it doesn't make it less true.
That's not what you were saying though. That's not what I objected to.
What Marshall Plan aid is the UK expecting at this stage? The UK Government is now out of tools to really push new industries and letting the old ones die, with the associated costs of unemployment etc. will only exacerbate the problems. The only great leap forward that will come here will resemble the one Mao tried...
It's Brexit innit? Somefink will turn up. Youll see.....
I 'ad that Boris Johnson in the back of my cab once.
(PS - Welcome aboard Mr/Ms ExTory)
Thanks for that Beibheirli, I've been a lurker for over 10 years now and thought I'd join the party rather than shout at the screen any more.
You will still shout at the screen. It is all part of the experience
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
Fascinating to know to origin of these bizarre numbers, which are all different. Was there a Whitehall sub committee back in the day which decided that screwdrivers should be 2.7% but shears 4.7% What earthly reason is there for any of this nonsense?
Ask the EU - they set them.
To be fair - they are (mostly) an agreed aggregation of the variously moronic, stupid, idiotic, superfluous, and self harming tariffs that the various countries of Europe had come up with themselves.
Added together. Blend with a pinch of back scratching IGetMineYouGetYours.
Then *added back on to* the various local comedies....
What Marshall Plan aid is the UK expecting at this stage? The UK Government is now out of tools to really push new industries and letting the old ones die, with the associated costs of unemployment etc. will only exacerbate the problems. The only great leap forward that will come here will resemble the one Mao tried...
It's Brexit innit? Somefink will turn up. Youll see.....
I 'ad that Boris Johnson in the back of my cab once.
(PS - Welcome aboard Mr/Ms ExTory)
Thanks for that Beibheirli, I've been a lurker for over 10 years now and thought I'd join the party rather than shout at the screen any more.
Welcome. And you might be interested to know that your username has prompted me to examine very carefully my Conservative Party membership, the renewal of which is due this June.
I huffed and puffed when Boris became leader but then I had Jezza as a backstop. The only reason for continuing my membership would be because I think that the economy will be better managed by the Conservatives. That is something I am unsure of atm and of course CV-19 further muddies the water.
I certainly know that the Cons Party is now full of MPs who I have very little in common with ideologically.
It wasn't an easy decision for me as I'd been a member since I turned 18 in 2004 and it certainly happened in stages.
I liked the people in Croydon Central and enjoyed canvassing in 2017, even if things didn't go quite to plan... I think the major change for me was when TMay announced that the plan was to leave the Customs Union and the Single Market. Before I'd understood the political element but when the whole thing evolved into economic vandalism, especially without there being any sort of equivalent trading arrangement for the UK to move into, I know the lunatics had taken the asylum.
Finally when my membership reminder came around I felt that I'd rather save the money than hand it over to a party I didn't recognise anymore and couldn't defend. I haven't voted for them since and doubt I will for a decade until centrifugal forces drive out the extremists and the party becomes moderate and leads in that way. They don't own my vote and I think the country would be in a better place if the Tories and the Labour Party didn't own voters the way they do.
As for Brexit, its the death spasm of the baby boomers and the people they do the thinking for. Its a shame that their death throes will damage the UK as much as it will, potentially ending it, but there is no greater lesson learned than the one learned through experience.
Aren't immigrants usually foreigners, Richard? Let's see if the examples you give work if we swap the two words.
Oh look, they do.
No, this is wrong.
To take an illustration I've used before, suppose a nice Swedish family come and live in a small English village. They would be welcomed. There would be no anti-Swedish sentiment. But if 100 Swedish families buy up half the houses in the village, the school starts teaching in Swedish, the pub gives up on English beer and ham, egg and chips, and instead serves only vodka and Smörgåsbord, then the locals would not unreasonably feel that their community is no longer recognisable, and resent it. They might even start hating the Swedish incomers themselves, although it's important to realise that that is a secondary effect.
There is nothing xenophobic or intolerant about this; it's perfectly reasonable. And whilst my example is artificial, it's not really very different to the impact of incoming EU workers in some specific towns and areas,
Failure to admit this perfectly natural and unobjectionable sentiment, and equating it with 'racism', is a big mistake - one of the mistakes which led to the disaster of Brexit.
Dishwashers (down from 2.7%) Freezers (down from 2.5%) Sanitary products and tampons (down from 6.3%) Paints (down from 6.5%) and screwdrivers (down from 2.7%) Mirrors (down from 4%) Scissors and garden shears (down from 4.7%) Padlocks (down from 2.7%) Cooking products such as baking powder (down from 6.1%), yeast (down from 12%), bay leaves (down from 7%), ground thyme (down from 8.5%) and cocoa powder (down from 8%) Christmas trees (down from 2.5%)
Most of these are easily within the range of currency fluctuation, and of course apply to the delivered cost, not the retail price - so anyone who think's they're going to get fiver off their £200 dishwasher is in for a disappointment. I wish people would stop fetishising "trade deals" and focus more on educating a work force "to make the stuff the world actually wants".
This seems an odd step. As you say these tariffs are not particularly an inhibition to trade but they will certainly be an inhibition to a free trade agreement with the EU. They cannot have a situation where goods that should bear such tariffs can be imported tariff free to the UK and then have free access to the EU. It therefore seems to be a ploy to make a FTA with the EU more difficult at a time when the negotiations are already struggling. Unhelpful.
Quite the opposite - it will make a prompt deal more attractive.
"But tariffs will remain on UK-produced cars - at 10% - and on agricultural products including lamb, beef and butter at their current levels, following concerns that these industries could be decimated by Brexit.
These new tariffs will be applied to trade with any country with which the UK has not negotiated a trade deal by the time the transition period ends on 31 December."
Don't understand the reference to UK-produced cars. If that is supposed to be non UK produced cars we are presumably saying that would apply to EU cars in the absence of a trade deal?
Its badly phrased, whoever wrote that but I understand what they were trying to say.
What they're trying to say is that goods we don't produce (dishwashers etc) are going to be permitted tariff-free, but goods we produce ourselves like cars will see tariffs for that sector.
So we are discouraging the manufacture of dishwashers in this country. Why? We urgently need import substitution to reduce our trade deficit.
Ive been saying that for years
You have indeed. And you are right. We cannot restrict our production to what we produce now. Bluntly, we just don't produce nearly enough to pay for our current standard of living.
I too like the idea of more self-sufficiency. But I'm not sure replacing cheap imports with expensive homegrown goods leads to a sustainable rise in our living standards.
Everything is a matter of degree but for the last 20 years these "cheap imports" have caused us to run a serious trade deficit with the result that we have switched from a creditor nation receiving more income from abroad than repatriated profits to a debtor nation where other countries own more and more of our assets and charge us rent for their use. In the longer term this will diminish the standard of living in this country. Indeed, it already has. So the true cost of "cheap imports" is much higher than it appears.
If we were finding better things to do than make these imports and were able to sell our skills abroad it would not matter. I don't have a particular fetish about manufacturing. But the sad truth is we don't, not by a long way. So we either accept a falling standard of living or we do something about it. Import substitution is one obvious way to address the problem but we need to improve investment, reduce consumption, improve training, education, productivity and our attitude towards engineers and applied scientists. Governments of all shades have failed to address this since the 70s. It is increasingly urgent.
I do agree with much of what you say here. But classic trade theory says that if things are made where it is cheapest to do so, it leads to an optimum material result for the whole. Of course this neglects incredibly important issues such as wealth distribution and environmental concerns. But that is the theory driving globalization and I believe it is widely accepted to be true. Meaning that if the process is reversed the world will be the (materially) poorer for it. Perhaps we can get richer in a world getting poorer, as opposed to (as now) getting poorer in one getting richer - talking relative rather than absolute - but my sense is it will be a big ask.
As I have said before free trade and the laws of comparative advantage worked very well for us when we were the machine shop of the world. When China has that title it may not work as well. Sure, overall, over 1m Chinese have been lifted out of poverty but this is not necessarily good for us or indeed western liberal values.
The second legend is that tariff driven beggar my neighbour policies caused the great depression in the early 1930s. It certainly didn't help although tariffs were much higher then but there were many more important causes. Domestic monetary policy (particularly in the US) and adherence to the gold standard caused much bigger problems.
I do think that we need to rethink some of this. I accept that this involves careful consideration of who our true friends are and that Brexit was not necessarily consistent with that.
Comments
Quite frankly, as a very long-term and totally unrepentant European, who hopes to live long enough to see us Rejoin the EU, I have no problem with unrestricted immigration from, and emigration to, Europe. Rather as was the case for many years with the Empire, before it was the Commonwealth.
Brightest and best can mean; we are happy to poach from less advantaged countries.
Your denial about the role anti-foreigner sentiment played in Brexit would be touching. In a five-year old. But in a grown man able on his own to log in to PB? Scary.
Scrap the lot, what on earth good does it do. It must cost a fair amount to administer. Seems phenomenally absurd, i had no idea we charged these small tariffs on random stuff.
If you find a quote from Gove saying "we hate foreigners" then you would have substantiated your claim.
I see you're rapidly backtracking from claiming "end migration" was "central" to Brexit, to "anti-foreigner sentiment played a role".
I never denied that anti-foreigner sentiment, a sentiment I abhor, played a role. But that's not what you were claiming. Why are you now backtracking?
(Mind you, that's not necessarily the same as 'anti-foreigner sentiment', so on that point @Philip_Thompson is partly right).
Also note that apart from the receptionist, all the medical staff treating the woman "out of the EU" are white.
But clearly not racist, no siree.
R does makes nice headline figure - even if we've already repeatedly been told its too confusing.
Brussels not Whitehall. Its mental and good riddance to it.
Like, let's see - with you - 'shoes' is what springs to mind. You have done more posts on shoes than any other poster.
Ending immigration was central to Brexit.
I really don't want to go all Godwin on the thread but, from my general reading around the subject, I understand (historians please correct me) that there was no similarly "gotcha" quote or document, even after Wansee, which explicitly confirmed Hitler's intention to exterminate the Jews.
To even begin to try to deny that immigration was central to Brexit is comical but as I say, each to their own.
In the "out of the EU" video there are also people of mixed races in the waiting area too.
Not racial. About money for the NHS.
Do you ever take a day off from hating on Britain?
If we were finding better things to do than make these imports and were able to sell our skills abroad it would not matter. I don't have a particular fetish about manufacturing. But the sad truth is we don't, not by a long way. So we either accept a falling standard of living or we do something about it. Import substitution is one obvious way to address the problem but we need to improve investment, reduce consumption, improve training, education, productivity and our attitude towards engineers and applied scientists. Governments of all shades have failed to address this since the 70s. It is increasingly urgent.
Another common one is people dreaming of their teeth falling out, which I have never had.
I mean - why?
If ending immigration was central to Brexit then why were Brexiteer campaigners saying "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly"
How is saying "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" consistent with ending migration. Please explain that logic?
How can you conceive of a law written on less than 10,000 sheets of A4? Are you a primitive, racist troglodyte?
A ministers red box might be readable in an hour - how can you run a country like that?
Think of the vast amount of unemployment you create?
Proper People would be reduced to thinking about second and third order effects of policy!
People can of course call it what they want but "anti-foreigner sentiment" I think encapsulates it well enough.
"Ending immigration" was not.
Irony surely is dead.
That depends on what your definition of the word is is.
cf Windrush.
Edit: non-UK EU citizens, obvs.
Edit x2: UK EU citizens will be sent back to Hartlepool.
(I have heard it rumoured that there are emergency dentists. I did not locate one, but I found a few hen's teeth......)
Please explain how you reconcile "we can have a strong and robust immigration system that lets the brightest and the best in from around the world and treats people more fairly" with "ending immigration".
In my eyes "ending immigration" would be a system that does not let the brightest and the best in from around the world, but if you have a different definition please explain it.
"Stopping so many foreigners coming to this country" was the policy of David Cameron and Theresa May, a policy I opposed when they had it.
The UK is all fur coat and no knickers now. We have flogged almost everything of value to whoever waves the most cash around.
I wonder if they voted for David Cameron who twice put reducing immigration into his manifesto?
She goes to the same hospital, the same receptionist signs her in, and she is seen immediately by the all white medical staff because the waiting room has been purged of all the "others"
Where is Roger when you need him?
If so, then was he just repeating the science or the PHE policy?
This ad, however, is clearly racist. While there were many reasons for voting Brexit, immigration control was always high in the reasons people gave, so there's no excuse for not being aware of the impact race has on ads.
There are prominent patients in the "Inside EU" ad who aren't white, but they're not shown in the "outside EU ad", while that split screen of reception staff, is about as blatant as you can get.
It might be possible to make an ad like this unintentionally, if you're totally tone deaf when it comes to race, but in the context of the Brexit debate it's clearly been planned.
I had an interesting time when I tried to bring up the different tariffs on components vs completed electronic items with my MP. Poking a nest of lawyers, policy makers, policy wonks, policy screwer-uppers...
She is seen immediately by the medical staff because the NHS has £350mn more a week thus the "others" as you put it have already been treated. Just as whoever arrives after her won't be seeing her in the waiting room.
Idiot. If you're too thick to understand that then don't cry racism.
What do you think those people who cited "immigration" as their primary reason for voting Leave thought about immigration?
In an early episode Abed creates a series of short films that turn out to be horribly prescient as each ridiculous event he predicted comes true.
Armando Iannucci must feel like that EVERY SINGLE DAMN DAY
Celebrating treating people "based on their skills, not where they're from" is a very good thing.
Or would you rather treat people based on where they're from, not their skills?
Rational people will not find any of this surprising or scandalous and will thank their lucky stars they weren't in charge themselves as it was an absolute nightmare.
Drinking this early in the day is bad for you. Maybe you should lie down for a bit
I care about the politicians who would have to implement it and the rights or wrongs of the decision. That's why quoting the politicians is what matters. Politicians who want to let in the best and brightest is a good thing.
https://twitter.com/brianmoore666/status/1262635851302842375?s=20
*nothing to do with good, sensible Brexiteerdom as represented on here.
Oh look, they do.
Waiting is due to lack of capacity, not because while you were waiting to be seen the x-ray machine you haven't been to yet was busy with your x-ray.
I liked the people in Croydon Central and enjoyed canvassing in 2017, even if things didn't go quite to plan... I think the major change for me was when TMay announced that the plan was to leave the Customs Union and the Single Market. Before I'd understood the political element but when the whole thing evolved into economic vandalism, especially without there being any sort of equivalent trading arrangement for the UK to move into, I know the lunatics had taken the asylum.
Finally when my membership reminder came around I felt that I'd rather save the money than hand it over to a party I didn't recognise anymore and couldn't defend. I haven't voted for them since and doubt I will for a decade until centrifugal forces drive out the extremists and the party becomes moderate and leads in that way. They don't own my vote and I think the country would be in a better place if the Tories and the Labour Party didn't own voters the way they do.
As for Brexit, its the death spasm of the baby boomers and the people they do the thinking for. Its a shame that their death throes will damage the UK as much as it will, potentially ending it, but there is no greater lesson learned than the one learned through experience.
D-Home was out of touch rather than incompetent, and he didn't last long.
Brown would be bottom of a pretty undistinguished bunch were it not for his handling of the financial crisis. Blair is almost a mirror image - would be close to the top but for Iraq.
Looking at the whole motley crew, you have to say we have not been overly blessed with gifted leaders. Maybe there is something wrong with the system.
That's not what you were saying though. That's not what I objected to.
Added together. Blend with a pinch of back scratching IGetMineYouGetYours.
Then *added back on to* the various local comedies....
Voila.
To take an illustration I've used before, suppose a nice Swedish family come and live in a small English village. They would be welcomed. There would be no anti-Swedish sentiment. But if 100 Swedish families buy up half the houses in the village, the school starts teaching in Swedish, the pub gives up on English beer and ham, egg and chips, and instead serves only vodka and Smörgåsbord, then the locals would not unreasonably feel that their community is no longer recognisable, and resent it. They might even start hating the Swedish incomers themselves, although it's important to realise that that is a secondary effect.
There is nothing xenophobic or intolerant about this; it's perfectly reasonable. And whilst my example is artificial, it's not really very different to the impact of incoming EU workers in some specific towns and areas,
Failure to admit this perfectly natural and unobjectionable sentiment, and equating it with 'racism', is a big mistake - one of the mistakes which led to the disaster of Brexit.
The second legend is that tariff driven beggar my neighbour policies caused the great depression in the early 1930s. It certainly didn't help although tariffs were much higher then but there were many more important causes. Domestic monetary policy (particularly in the US) and adherence to the gold standard caused much bigger problems.
I do think that we need to rethink some of this. I accept that this involves careful consideration of who our true friends are and that Brexit was not necessarily consistent with that.