Just how much fish are we planning on catching to make up for the economic hit of hard Brexit
Quite. And who is going to buy it? There is a huge mismatch of UK fish catch with the UK internal market. People are going to end up having mackerel and potato for dinner rather than pizza. Or mackerel pizza.
Why wouldn't we just export it? The people currently buying the fish presumably will continue to want to do so.
all the extra costs, tariffs etc , they will get it elsewhere or stick to local.
And logistics. Spanish trawler catches North Sea fish and lands it at Spanish port is one thing, Aberdeen trawler ditto and then puts it into trucks to drive to Dover to sit in customs queue to cross channel to drive to Spain is another, fish being fish.
Hmm. Whilst I get your point, it is as nothing compared to the fact that fish is currently sent from the UK to China to be filleted, processed, packaged and sent back for sale in UK supermarkets as 'British' fish.
I'm afraid the difference is the Spanish like their fish really, really fresh, and the British will eat virtually anything.
Texas seems to be avoiding the Covid apocalypse. Houston hospital occupancy rate is falling but their hospitalisation death rate keeps rising.
It was inevitable the death rate would rise given the hospitalisation rates but hopefully not too much. Do you think they've peaked if it's falling again? Deaths are rather a lagging indicator.
Given the improvements in treatment it shouldn't have been inevitable I don't think.
But overall I think they have passed the peak of this wave. I am not clued up on what counter measure Texas has taken over the last few weeks.
If @ydoethur or any other decent historians are about, what are the best book(s) to read about the Black Death?
I currently have a working knowledge about the Great Pestilence of the 14th century.
I'm particularly keen to know more about the blame the Jews received for the (inaccurate) perception that they were the ones responsible for spreading the Black Death?
Philip Ziegler’s work on it is about 30 years old, but still the standard,
Is that just Republican held battleground states, or does it also include New Hampshire, Minnesota and Nevada? If the former, it's a great result for the Dems, and if the latter, it's a poor one.
Boris is obsessed with fishing. Nobody outside of a tiny minority gives a shit about fishing, let’s be real here.
My Scottish family do and with a passion.
Their communities were founded on fishing
And they will be in the tiny minority. North Shields on Tyneside was “founded on fishing” and yet the Fish Quay, whilst still being a working fishing port, is full of edgy bars and flats these days.
It does not mean that fishing is not a big issue in the North East Scottish fishing communities
Fishing is a massive issue Mr G, crazy but true.
If Boris 'betrays' those fishermen (persons?) he can forget leading the tories into the next election and I would doubt the tories would form the next government.
We want those waters. We want to tell Frenchman and Spaniards they cannot fish there even if we don;t want to fish there ourselves. Are we right to want that at the expense of much else? I don;t know, but I know its true.
Fishing really is that big.
Well we shouldn’t have sold them the quotas
Maybe the EEC shouldn’t have dreamt up the Common Fisheries Policy back in the early 70’s just so it could make a grab for fishing rights ( or natural resources as they are) of the then four prospective joiners, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway who just so happened to bring with them vast oceans which the EEC did not possess, but which could force them to hand over as a joining fee of acquis communautaire. Norway voted not to join of course, partly because of this issue I’m sure.
Just imagine if Spain Italy Greece and Portugal joined, and the northerners dreamt up a Common Citrus Fruit Policy and said hand over your lemon groves because we’ve not got any.
It was a total injustice 50 years ago, that may be close to being at least partially righted, and despite its minuscule economic value the whole issue has become far more totemic than Barnier wanted I’m sure. Maybe they should’ve been a bit more circumspect about screwing us over on this in the 70’s in the first place? What goes around and all that.
You must realise how out of touch you are, right?
This 'out of touch' argument seems quite well founded and decently argued to me. Could Gallowgate tell us what's wrong with it?
I already have. @welshowl is treating “fishing” like an issue of significant national importance, when actually no normal person gives a hoot.
It’s not if any great import economically ( a few costal places aside), but it’s symbolic of what was wrong from day one in 1973.
They literally created the CFP as a reaction to the four wanting to join. It was a grab for booty pure and simple. All the fine talk of esprit communautaire was just that- talk. It would’ve been far better for the EEC to have left this well alone, but no, they felt they had the whip hand and they used it. The result was it went on to the list of things we weren’t entirely comfortable with, with the rebate, FOM, the ECJ etc. Niggling like a stone in a shoe. It even played a role in 2016 when Geldof decided to sail down the Thames to have an “easy” go at Farage and ended up being confronted by some fisher folk.
It was all so unnecessary by the EEC/EU, precisely because it is such a small industry. But here we are 50 years on and it’s a major issue now way out of all proportion to its monetary worth.
The EU overplaying it’s strong hand (again!!!) in microcosm.
They literally created the CFP as a reaction to the four wanting to join. It was a grab for booty pure and simple.
That's a little simplistic.
The founding principle of the EU is the free movement of goods, services and people. That means that the British box system, which allowed only UK and Irish fishermen to own rights to fish in the jointly administered territorial waters of the UK and Ireland.
Not allowing those to be owned by non-British/Irish entities would have breached the "free movement" clause of the treaties, and so the CFP was created. And for a decade or so, only UK and Irish fishermen owned these quotas.
With the accession of two more countries with Atlantic fishing (Spain and Portugal), we started to see industrial fishing vessels and fleets that displaced 10x what a smaller British trawler did. With just twice the number of people, they could catch 10x the fish. And so, the Spanish fishing concerns bought up quotas from British fishermen, as they could pay the equivalent of 10 years or so of fishing revenues for them - and the fisherman wouldn't have to get up early to do back breaking work.
Sorry Robert but this is wrong. Or at least misleading. Prior to the UK/Denmark/Ireland accession there was no CFP for the existing EEC countries fishing in the North Sea, the Baltic or the Med. They were perfectly happy for fishing to be a national competence before then. It was only when those countries with very large fishing areas - the UK, Ireland and Norway - were looking to join that the CFP was devised. That gave quotas for fishing in British and Irish waters (the Norwegians had more sense than to join in the end) to other EEC countries from the very start.
On fishing, I'd be very surprised if Boris gave way. It may not be economically important, but it's hugely useful in Scotland politically. And we've seen BJ waking up to the Scottish problem. SNP hate it when they are accused of wanting to hand fishing back to the EU - no plausible answer to the charge.
On Indy, generally. I'm struck how strong Starmer and his Shadow SoS for Scotland, Ian Murray are on the subject. They are not going to allow themselves to be stitched up as Sturgeon puppets as Miliband was. Boris can rule out IndyRef2 with impunity.
Another counter-intuitive thought at a time of Sturgeon worship. The SNP's strength is its ability to draw support from Left and Right in Scotland. But that can also be its weakness. Beyond a hardcore of, say, 20% or so, who put Indy above all else, they are vulnerable to being squeezed if politics becomes about economics and services. We saw in 2017 how they were rattled by Scots Tory revival. Labour, if they get their act together, are far more dangerous than the Tories as most Scots feel fairly benign to the party. They could revive. Stranger things have happened (as we have seen).
Unionist golden bullet #12,451
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Roger’s cousin MP.
Well, who would have expected SCUP to put a spanner in the works in '17?. Things change. Will be interesting to see if the famous 54% poll is a trend (or not).
Just how much fish are we planning on catching to make up for the economic hit of hard Brexit
Quite. And who is going to buy it? There is a huge mismatch of UK fish catch with the UK internal market. People are going to end up having mackerel and potato for dinner rather than pizza. Or mackerel pizza.
Why wouldn't we just export it? The people currently buying the fish presumably will continue to want to do so.
all the extra costs, tariffs etc , they will get it elsewhere or stick to local.
And logistics. Spanish trawler catches North Sea fish and lands it at Spanish port is one thing, Aberdeen trawler ditto and then puts it into trucks to drive to Dover to sit in customs queue to cross channel to drive to Spain is another, fish being fish.
Hmm. Whilst I get your point, it is as nothing compared to the fact that fish is currently sent from the UK to China to be filleted, processed, packaged and sent back for sale in UK supermarkets as 'British' fish.
I'm afraid the difference is the Spanish like their fish really, really fresh, and the British will eat virtually anything.
Some of us were even brought up on canned snoek.
I had to google that. You poor thing.
Not me personally, at least not that I recall. You infer too much.
Is that just Republican held battleground states, or does it also include New Hampshire, Minnesota and Nevada? If the former, it's a great result for the Dems, and if the latter, it's a poor one.
Answering my own question, the states are - Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona - all of which were Republican in 2016.
Biden doesn't need to get +3% in those states to win, he just needs to move from -1.2% to -0.5%.
We seem unclear as to our ultimate goal. Is it to protect British fishermen? Or is to have an efficient fishing industry? "Taking back control" - to a struggling fisherman - does not mean that rights become British but nothing changes.
The ultimate goal is to protect people who voted for Brexit from the realisation that they were dupes.
If @ydoethur or any other decent historians are about, what are the best book(s) to read about the Black Death?
I currently have a working knowledge about the Great Pestilence of the 14th century.
I'm particularly keen to know more about the blame the Jews received for the (inaccurate) perception that they were the ones responsible for spreading the Black Death?
Philip Ziegler’s work on it is about 30 years old, but still the standard,
What a devastating tweet - indy supporter says existence of PM proves why indy is needed.
It's the same argument as Brexit
Brexiteer says existence of Brussels proves why Brexit is needed.
It's unmitigated shite whichever petty nationalist is spouting it, but the point is it works. In both cases.
Nationalism is neither petty nor nonsense.
Nationalism is a very good thing, but like all good things is bad if taken to extremes.
I think unless the driver is to create a new and viable democratic state with civilized values it is usually a bad thing. But I wouldn't be dogmatic about it. Each case is different.
Nationalism at its best is no more and no less than wanting the best for your own nation and its interests. That does not have to be negative to other nations, wanting the best for yourselves is a good thing. It is about recognising your nation . . . and your fellow men and women within it . . . as being important.
What I'm getting at a more specific distinction. That between (1) A nationalist movement to create a new state and (2) Strong nationalist sentiment in an existing state.
(2) is usually bad news. Sometimes VERY bad news.
I don't agree. Taking it to extremes it can be a bad thing but anything taken to extremes is a bad thing.
I'm saying it's usually bad news not that it always has to be. Simply take a look around. Strong nationalist movements in existing states tend to be malign. Trump. LePen. Salvini. Duda. Wilders. Golden Dawn. Orban. Farage. Etc Etc. Plus countless historical examples.
Disagreed. They're the extremists.
How about Obama, Bill Clinton, Macron etc?
Every one of them flies their flag everywhere they go. Every American leader has been a nationalist I can't think of a single one that isn't - they all fly the flag, do the pledge of allegiance etc, etc, etc . . . you just take it for granted. People moaned here about 'nationalist' Boris putting a Union Flag on the airplane even after it was pointed out Macron's plane has a Tricolour on it. People moan here about British ministers speaking in front of a Union Flag, but Macron always speaks in front of a Tricolour.
If you're going to define the US Dems under Clinton/Obama and En Marche in France as "nationalist movements", I suggest we have lost any useful common unders tanding of what the N word means.
You say my examples are extremists. Well, yes. Nationalist movements in existing states tend to be malign extremists. This is the point.
Trump MAGA. LePen. Salvini. Duda. Wilders. Golden Dawn. Orban. Farage. BNP. Bolsonaro. AfD in Germany. Etc. They are all over. See here just for Europe -
Quite a list. Perhaps you can supply a list of "benign" nationalist movements in existing states and we can see who has the bigger one.
I think we should define nationalist by how it is defined here then compare across the globe.Every time Boris gets near a flag we hear that it is because he is a nationalist . . . well on that standard so is literally every President ever. And they are. By our standards nearly every American is a nationalist because they don't view that, they don't view patriotism, as something to be ashamed of.
So let's see a list of current nationalist movements in existing states that are iyo benign. Just start with Europe if this makes it easier. I'm truly intrigued.
Benign - not necessarily I would vote for them, and I'm going to steer clear of the EU.
UK: The Conservative Party The Scottish National Party Plaid Cymru
USA: The Democrats
Australia: The Liberals The Nationals The Australian Labor Party
New Zealand Labour (currently in coalition with NZ First) NZ First (currently in coalition with Labour) National
Do you have a problem with Jacinda Ahern's government in New Zealand?
The SNP and PC don't fit the criteria since their cause is creation of a new sovereign state. The US Democrats are in no recognizable meaning of the word a Nationalist party. Nor are the Libs or Labour down under. Leaving us with Johnson's Tories, NZ First, and the Australia National Party. That's 3 nationalist parties which are arguably not malign and xenophobic - although some would beg to differ - versus the much greater number on my list that clearly are. This rather speaks for itself. I will therefore retype my now proven assertion and put it in italics to mark the end of this exchange -
Nationalist movements in existing sovereign states are usually malign.
In any meaningful definition the US Democrats are nationalist. A person who strongly identifies with their own nation and vigorously supports its interests
Do US Democrats strongly identify with their own nation and vigorously support its own interests, yes or no?
I could have listed dozens and dozens more parties if I wanted to do so, so your assertion is entirely fallacious.
I see you truncated the definition to suit.
"identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.
You need the last bit otherwise almost every mainstream political party classifies and it loses utility as a term.
So, no, the Dems are not a nationalist party. Maintaining they are will take you into trolling territory and you know how that ends. It ends with another item on the list.
Do you want "The US Democrats are a Nationalist Party" to go as number 11 on the list?
I've said all along that detriment to others is only for extremists. That is a definition made by opponents of nationalism.
Who are the NZ government of Jacinda Ahern trying to be to the detriment of?
I'll take that as a yes. We have reached 11. Bottom line is almost everyone is a Nationalist per your exotic definition. The Lib Dems. They identify with Britain and want the best for the country. VERY strongly in favour of the national interest but without damaging others. Just ask Ed Davey. He'll tell you.
Almost everyone is a nationalist yes.
Internationalists, who don't value their own country at all are an extreme minority.
Read Orwell's Notes On Nationalism.
He analysed the various "international" allegiances of his day - Communism, Catholicism etc. His point was that they represented a variant on nationalism - the transference of nationalistic feeling from the Nation to the Supra-Nation. Much as, historically, clan/tribe loyalty had been transferred/added to regional nationalism, then nation level nationalism
Most of the "internationalism" you see is a variation on this theme - EU Nationalism, for example.
Completely agreed. See a great many EU Nationalists on this site.
So we're expanding the "nationalist" definition to expand, what, the globe? I think everyone knows what nationalism means apart from you who said that almost everyone is a nationalist. When your experiences on PB (which as I said you seem to populate 24/7) does not bear that out.
On this site we have a variety of forms of nationalists. Quite a few Scottish nationalists, quite a few British/UK nationalists, quite a few European nationalists . . . I think (but may be wrong) I'm possibly the only English nationalist.
What people are perceiving as their nation: the UK/Scotland/Europe/England that they're nationalistically supporting varies but there is a heck of a lot of nationalism here.
The number of true internationalists here is quite limited.
A bit silly to see every form of identity as a kind of "nationalism" , and shows how obsessed you are. Other forms of identity have been around much longer than nationalism, and will no doubt be around long after nationalism ceases to be important.
If someone is attached to their town /football team /hobby/religion/whatever, are they all forms of "nationalism"?
If @ydoethur or any other decent historians are about, what are the best book(s) to read about the Black Death?
I currently have a working knowledge about the Great Pestilence of the 14th century.
I'm particularly keen to know more about the blame the Jews received for the (inaccurate) perception that they were the ones responsible for spreading the Black Death?
Ben Gummer wrote a comprehensive history of the Black Death a few years ago.
He did, but it is limited to the British Isles where England had just expelled its Jewish population.
The word ‘just’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting there - it was sixty years before.
There’s quite an extensive bibliography here, not including the article itself which is tangential to your point.
Alfani’s Calamities and the Economy in Renaissance Italy: The Grand Tour of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse looks potentially the most interesting one to start with.
We seem unclear as to our ultimate goal. Is it to protect British fishermen? Or is to have an efficient fishing industry? "Taking back control" - to a struggling fisherman - does not mean that rights become British but nothing changes.
The ultimate goal is to protect people who voted for Brexit from the realisation that they were dupes.
The ultimate goal is to do this for as long as possible and depart the stage before realisation strikes.
Boris is obsessed with fishing. Nobody outside of a tiny minority gives a shit about fishing, let’s be real here.
My Scottish family do and with a passion.
Their communities were founded on fishing
And they will be in the tiny minority. North Shields on Tyneside was “founded on fishing” and yet the Fish Quay, whilst still being a working fishing port, is full of edgy bars and flats these days.
It does not mean that fishing is not a big issue in the North East Scottish fishing communities
Fishing is a massive issue Mr G, crazy but true.
If Boris 'betrays' those fishermen (persons?) he can forget leading the tories into the next election and I would doubt the tories would form the next government.
We want those waters. We want to tell Frenchman and Spaniards they cannot fish there even if we don;t want to fish there ourselves. Are we right to want that at the expense of much else? I don;t know, but I know its true.
Fishing really is that big.
Well we shouldn’t have sold them the quotas
Maybe the EEC shouldn’t have dreamt up the Common Fisheries Policy back in the early 70’s just so it could make a grab for fishing rights ( or natural resources as they are) of the then four prospective joiners, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway who just so happened to bring with them vast oceans which the EEC did not possess, but which could force them to hand over as a joining fee of acquis communautaire. Norway voted not to join of course, partly because of this issue I’m sure.
Just imagine if Spain Italy Greece and Portugal joined, and the northerners dreamt up a Common Citrus Fruit Policy and said hand over your lemon groves because we’ve not got any.
It was a total injustice 50 years ago, that may be close to being at least partially righted, and despite its minuscule economic value the whole issue has become far more totemic than Barnier wanted I’m sure. Maybe they should’ve been a bit more circumspect about screwing us over on this in the 70’s in the first place? What goes around and all that.
You must realise how out of touch you are, right?
This 'out of touch' argument seems quite well founded and decently argued to me. Could Gallowgate tell us what's wrong with it?
I already have. @welshowl is treating “fishing” like an issue of significant national importance, when actually no normal person gives a hoot.
It’s not if any great import economically ( a few costal places aside), but it’s symbolic of what was wrong from day one in 1973.
They literally created the CFP as a reaction to the four wanting to join. It was a grab for booty pure and simple. All the fine talk of esprit communautaire was just that- talk. It would’ve been far better for the EEC to have left this well alone, but no, they felt they had the whip hand and they used it. The result was it went on to the list of things we weren’t entirely comfortable with, with the rebate, FOM, the ECJ etc. Niggling like a stone in a shoe. It even played a role in 2016 when Geldof decided to sail down the Thames to have an “easy” go at Farage and ended up being confronted by some fisher folk.
It was all so unnecessary by the EEC/EU, precisely because it is such a small industry. But here we are 50 years on and it’s a major issue now way out of all proportion to its monetary worth.
The EU overplaying it’s strong hand (again!!!) in microcosm.
They literally created the CFP as a reaction to the four wanting to join. It was a grab for booty pure and simple.
That's a little simplistic.
The founding principle of the EU is the free movement of goods, services and people. That means that the British box system, which allowed only UK and Irish fishermen to own rights to fish in the jointly administered territorial waters of the UK and Ireland.
Not allowing those to be owned by non-British/Irish entities would have breached the "free movement" clause of the treaties, and so the CFP was created. And for a decade or so, only UK and Irish fishermen owned these quotas.
With the accession of two more countries with Atlantic fishing (Spain and Portugal), we started to see industrial fishing vessels and fleets that displaced 10x what a smaller British trawler did. With just twice the number of people, they could catch 10x the fish. And so, the Spanish fishing concerns bought up quotas from British fishermen, as they could pay the equivalent of 10 years or so of fishing revenues for them - and the fisherman wouldn't have to get up early to do back breaking work.
Sorry Robert but this is wrong. Or at least misleading. Prior to the UK/Denmark/Ireland accession there was no CFP for the existing EEC countries fishing in the North Sea, the Baltic or the Med. They were perfectly happy for fishing to be a national competence before then. It was only when those countries with very large fishing areas - the UK, Ireland and Norway - were looking to join that the CFP was devised. That gave quotas for fishing in British and Irish waters (the Norwegians had more sense than to join in the end) to other EEC countries from the very start.
On fishing, I'd be very surprised if Boris gave way. It may not be economically important, but it's hugely useful in Scotland politically. And we've seen BJ waking up to the Scottish problem. SNP hate it when they are accused of wanting to hand fishing back to the EU - no plausible answer to the charge.
On Indy, generally. I'm struck how strong Starmer and his Shadow SoS for Scotland, Ian Murray are on the subject. They are not going to allow themselves to be stitched up as Sturgeon puppets as Miliband was. Boris can rule out IndyRef2 with impunity.
Another counter-intuitive thought at a time of Sturgeon worship. The SNP's strength is its ability to draw support from Left and Right in Scotland. But that can also be its weakness. Beyond a hardcore of, say, 20% or so, who put Indy above all else, they are vulnerable to being squeezed if politics becomes about economics and services. We saw in 2017 how they were rattled by Scots Tory revival. Labour, if they get their act together, are far more dangerous than the Tories as most Scots feel fairly benign to the party. They could revive. Stranger things have happened (as we have seen).
Unionist golden bullet #12,451
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Roger’s cousin MP.
Well, who would have expected SCUP to put a spanner in the works in '17?. Things change. Will be interesting to see if the famous 54% poll is a trend (or not).
Polls.
SCUP flatlined on about 15% for 20 years. Looked unrevivable. SLAB, it seems to me, has much more potential to recover. Just need a decent and plausible leader. They now have a decent UK leader which is another precondition, and the prospect of the politics of economic recovery overtaking the constitution as the prevailing concern - which is on its way, once the pandemic recedes.
Boris is obsessed with fishing. Nobody outside of a tiny minority gives a shit about fishing, let’s be real here.
My Scottish family do and with a passion.
Their communities were founded on fishing
And they will be in the tiny minority. North Shields on Tyneside was “founded on fishing” and yet the Fish Quay, whilst still being a working fishing port, is full of edgy bars and flats these days.
It does not mean that fishing is not a big issue in the North East Scottish fishing communities
Fishing is a massive issue Mr G, crazy but true.
If Boris 'betrays' those fishermen (persons?) he can forget leading the tories into the next election and I would doubt the tories would form the next government.
We want those waters. We want to tell Frenchman and Spaniards they cannot fish there even if we don;t want to fish there ourselves. Are we right to want that at the expense of much else? I don;t know, but I know its true.
Fishing really is that big.
Well we shouldn’t have sold them the quotas
Maybe the EEC shouldn’t have dreamt up the Common Fisheries Policy back in the early 70’s just so it could make a grab for fishing rights ( or natural resources as they are) of the then four prospective joiners, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway who just so happened to bring with them vast oceans which the EEC did not possess, but which could force them to hand over as a joining fee of acquis communautaire. Norway voted not to join of course, partly because of this issue I’m sure.
Just imagine if Spain Italy Greece and Portugal joined, and the northerners dreamt up a Common Citrus Fruit Policy and said hand over your lemon groves because we’ve not got any.
It was a total injustice 50 years ago, that may be close to being at least partially righted, and despite its minuscule economic value the whole issue has become far more totemic than Barnier wanted I’m sure. Maybe they should’ve been a bit more circumspect about screwing us over on this in the 70’s in the first place? What goes around and all that.
You must realise how out of touch you are, right?
This 'out of touch' argument seems quite well founded and decently argued to me. Could Gallowgate tell us what's wrong with it?
I already have. @welshowl is treating “fishing” like an issue of significant national importance, when actually no normal person gives a hoot.
It’s not if any great import economically ( a few costal places aside), but it’s symbolic of what was wrong from day one in 1973.
They literally created the CFP as a reaction to the four wanting to join. It was a grab for booty pure and simple. All the fine talk of esprit communautaire was just that- talk. It would’ve been far better for the EEC to have left this well alone, but no, they felt they had the whip hand and they used it. The result was it went on to the list of things we weren’t entirely comfortable with, with the rebate, FOM, the ECJ etc. Niggling like a stone in a shoe. It even played a role in 2016 when Geldof decided to sail down the Thames to have an “easy” go at Farage and ended up being confronted by some fisher folk.
It was all so unnecessary by the EEC/EU, precisely because it is such a small industry. But here we are 50 years on and it’s a major issue now way out of all proportion to its monetary worth.
The EU overplaying it’s strong hand (again!!!) in microcosm.
They literally created the CFP as a reaction to the four wanting to join. It was a grab for booty pure and simple.
That's a little simplistic.
The founding principle of the EU is the free movement of goods, services and people. That means that the British box system, which allowed only UK and Irish fishermen to own rights to fish in the jointly administered territorial waters of the UK and Ireland.
Not allowing those to be owned by non-British/Irish entities would have breached the "free movement" clause of the treaties, and so the CFP was created. And for a decade or so, only UK and Irish fishermen owned these quotas.
With the accession of two more countries with Atlantic fishing (Spain and Portugal), we started to see industrial fishing vessels and fleets that displaced 10x what a smaller British trawler did. With just twice the number of people, they could catch 10x the fish. And so, the Spanish fishing concerns bought up quotas from British fishermen, as they could pay the equivalent of 10 years or so of fishing revenues for them - and the fisherman wouldn't have to get up early to do back breaking work.
Sorry Robert but this is wrong. Or at least misleading. Prior to the UK/Denmark/Ireland accession there was no CFP for the existing EEC countries fishing in the North Sea, the Baltic or the Med. They were perfectly happy for fishing to be a national competence before then. It was only when those countries with very large fishing areas - the UK, Ireland and Norway - were looking to join that the CFP was devised. That gave quotas for fishing in British and Irish waters (the Norwegians had more sense than to join in the end) to other EEC countries from the very start.
On fishing, I'd be very surprised if Boris gave way. It may not be economically important, but it's hugely useful in Scotland politically. And we've seen BJ waking up to the Scottish problem. SNP hate it when they are accused of wanting to hand fishing back to the EU - no plausible answer to the charge.
On Indy, generally. I'm struck how strong Starmer and his Shadow SoS for Scotland, Ian Murray are on the subject. They are not going to allow themselves to be stitched up as Sturgeon puppets as Miliband was. Boris can rule out IndyRef2 with impunity.
Another counter-intuitive thought at a time of Sturgeon worship. The SNP's strength is its ability to draw support from Left and Right in Scotland. But that can also be its weakness. Beyond a hardcore of, say, 20% or so, who put Indy above all else, they are vulnerable to being squeezed if politics becomes about economics and services. We saw in 2017 how they were rattled by Scots Tory revival. Labour, if they get their act together, are far more dangerous than the Tories as most Scots feel fairly benign to the party. They could revive. Stranger things have happened (as we have seen).
Unionist golden bullet #12,451
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Roger’s cousin MP.
Well, who would have expected SCUP to put a spanner in the works in '17?. Things change. Will be interesting to see if the famous 54% poll is a trend (or not).
Polls.
SCUP flatlined on about 15% for 20 years. Looked unrevivable. SLAB, it seems to me, has much more potential to recover. Just need a decent and plausible leader. They now have a decent UK leader which is another precondition, and the prospect of the politics of economic recovery overtaking the constitution as the prevailing concern - which is on its way, once the pandemic recedes.
Still waiting for the slightest sign of an SKS Scotch breakthrough, or an indication that SLab/Lab have learned anything from their series of disastrous (for them) Scottish approaches. Nada so far.
"On this site we have a variety of forms of nationalists"
The most insidious, of course, are extreme Cornish (or visa versa) nationalists bent on their diabolical "Greater East Cornwall Co-Prosperity Sphere" extending from Shepard's Bush Roundabout to the Tamar.
Do NOT let the Pasty-Faced villains get away with their knavish tricks!
Twitter (TWTR) is actively exploring additional ways to make money from its users, including by considering a subscription model, CEO Jack Dorsey said Thursday. The move comes as Twitter suffers a sharp decline in its core advertising business.
"You will likely see some tests this year" of various approaches, Dorsey told analysts on an investor call held to discuss the company's second quarter earnings results. Dorsey said he has "a really high bar for when we would ask consumers to pay for aspects of Twitter," but confirmed that the company is seeking to diversify its sources of revenue in what are "very, very early phases of exploring."
If @ydoethur or any other decent historians are about, what are the best book(s) to read about the Black Death?
I currently have a working knowledge about the Great Pestilence of the 14th century.
I'm particularly keen to know more about the blame the Jews received for the (inaccurate) perception that they were the ones responsible for spreading the Black Death?
Ben Gummer wrote a comprehensive history of the Black Death a few years ago.
He did, but it is limited to the British Isles where England had just expelled its Jewish population.
The word ‘just’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting there - it was sixty years before.
There’s quite an extensive bibliography here, not including the article itself which is tangential to your point.
Alfani’s Calamities and the Economy in Renaissance Italy: The Grand Tour of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse looks potentially the most interesting one to start with.
When you get to my age, 60 years is "just." And the point stands anyway - if they had been expelled and not readmitted, there was no point in claiming that they were poisoning the wells. A pogrom without Jews is like a pizza without pineapple.
Twitter (TWTR) is actively exploring additional ways to make money from its users, including by considering a subscription model, CEO Jack Dorsey said Thursday. The move comes as Twitter suffers a sharp decline in its core advertising business.
"You will likely see some tests this year" of various approaches, Dorsey told analysts on an investor call held to discuss the company's second quarter earnings results. Dorsey said he has "a really high bar for when we would ask consumers to pay for aspects of Twitter," but confirmed that the company is seeking to diversify its sources of revenue in what are "very, very early phases of exploring."
They must be in trouble. Smacks of desperation. Corporate entities and celebs might be willing to pay for the privilege of broadcasting their meaningless soundbites and advertising this week's new product, but the ordinary users?
Screaming at the world for free is one thing, parting with money to do it is quite another.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
How much do you want to bet? As that timescale doesn't work due to the low base we would be starting from.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
We need to stop surgeons from wearing masks now. Thank goodness @NerysHughes has identified this massive issue.
Twitter (TWTR) is actively exploring additional ways to make money from its users, including by considering a subscription model, CEO Jack Dorsey said Thursday. The move comes as Twitter suffers a sharp decline in its core advertising business.
"You will likely see some tests this year" of various approaches, Dorsey told analysts on an investor call held to discuss the company's second quarter earnings results. Dorsey said he has "a really high bar for when we would ask consumers to pay for aspects of Twitter," but confirmed that the company is seeking to diversify its sources of revenue in what are "very, very early phases of exploring."
They must be in trouble. Smacks of desperation. Corporate entities and celebs might be willing to pay for the privilege of broadcasting their meaningless soundbites and advertising this week's new product, but the ordinary users?
Screaming at the world for free is one thing, parting with money to do it is quite another.
I would heartily rejoice if Twitter were to crash and burn.
Twitter (TWTR) is actively exploring additional ways to make money from its users, including by considering a subscription model, CEO Jack Dorsey said Thursday. The move comes as Twitter suffers a sharp decline in its core advertising business.
"You will likely see some tests this year" of various approaches, Dorsey told analysts on an investor call held to discuss the company's second quarter earnings results. Dorsey said he has "a really high bar for when we would ask consumers to pay for aspects of Twitter," but confirmed that the company is seeking to diversify its sources of revenue in what are "very, very early phases of exploring."
They must be in trouble. Smacks of desperation. Corporate entities and celebs might be willing to pay for the privilege of broadcasting their meaningless soundbites and advertising this week's new product, but the ordinary users?
Screaming at the world for free is one thing, parting with money to do it is quite another.
Someone who knows a lot about Social Media marketing pointed out that every test he had every ran showed that advertising on Twitter just doesn't work.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
Judge Orders Cohen Released, Citing ‘Retaliation’ Over Tell-All Book
A judge agreed that federal officials had returned Michael D. Cohen to prison because he wanted to publish a book this fall about President Trump.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered that Michael D. Cohen be released into home confinement after finding that federal officials had returned him to prison in retaliation for his plans to write a tell-all memoir about President Trump.
The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court, said Mr. Cohen was sent back to prison this month after several weeks of medical furlough because of his desire to publish a book before the election about his years as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer.
“I make the finding that the purpose of transferring Mr. Cohen from furlough and home confinement to jail is retaliatory,” the judge said. “And it’s retaliation because of his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book and to discuss anything about the book or anything else he wants on social media and with others.” . . .
. . . on July 9, prisons officials abruptly returned Mr. Cohen to prison after he balked at signing an agreement outlining the terms of his release. Those terms included a provision that would have prevented him from publishing a book, his suit said.
In court papers filed this week, prisons officials denied Mr. Cohen was sent back to prison because of his book; rather, they said, he had been “combative” and “defiant” when they met to discuss the agreement, and they considered such behavior to be “unacceptable.”
In his suit, Mr. Cohen claimed that he never hid the fact that he was writing a book about Mr. Trump. He noted that he spent his mornings working on the manuscript “in plain sight” in the prison’s law library, and said he also discussed the project openly with prison officials, staff members and even other inmates.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
You don't sound like you hope you are wrong.
Of course I hope I’m wrong as if cases go up the government will force mask wearing every time you go outside which is the case in Spain at the moment.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
We need to stop surgeons from wearing masks now. Thank goodness @NerysHughes has identified this massive issue.
Just how much fish are we planning on catching to make up for the economic hit of hard Brexit
Quite. And who is going to buy it? There is a huge mismatch of UK fish catch with the UK internal market. People are going to end up having mackerel and potato for dinner rather than pizza. Or mackerel pizza.
Why wouldn't we just export it? The people currently buying the fish presumably will continue to want to do so.
Boris is obsessed with fishing. Nobody outside of a tiny minority gives a shit about fishing, let’s be real here.
My Scottish family do and with a passion.
Their communities were founded on fishing
And they will be in the tiny minority. North Shields on Tyneside was “founded on fishing” and yet the Fish Quay, whilst still being a working fishing port, is full of edgy bars and flats these days.
It does not mean that fishing is not a big issue in the North East Scottish fishing communities
Fishing is a massive issue Mr G, crazy but true.
If Boris 'betrays' those fishermen (persons?) he can forget leading the tories into the next election and I would doubt the tories would form the next government.
We want those waters. We want to tell Frenchman and Spaniards they cannot fish there even if we don;t want to fish there ourselves. Are we right to want that at the expense of much else? I don;t know, but I know its true.
Fishing really is that big.
Well we shouldn’t have sold them the quotas
Maybe the EEC shouldn’t have dreamt up the Common Fisheries Policy back in the early 70’s just so it could make a grab for fishing rights ( or natural resources as they are) of the then four prospective joiners, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway who just so happened to bring with them vast oceans which the EEC did not possess, but which could force them to hand over as a joining fee of acquis communautaire. Norway voted not to join of course, partly because of this issue I’m sure.
Just imagine if Spain Italy Greece and Portugal joined, and the northerners dreamt up a Common Citrus Fruit Policy and said hand over your lemon groves because we’ve not got any.
It was a total injustice 50 years ago, that may be close to being at least partially righted, and despite its minuscule economic value the whole issue has become far more totemic than Barnier wanted I’m sure. Maybe they should’ve been a bit more circumspect about screwing us over on this in the 70’s in the first place? What goes around and all that.
You must realise how out of touch you are, right?
This 'out of touch' argument seems quite well founded and decently argued to me. Could Gallowgate tell us what's wrong with it?
I already have. @welshowl is treating “fishing” like an issue of significant national importance, when actually no normal person gives a hoot.
It’s not if any great import economically ( a few costal places aside), but it’s symbolic of what was wrong from day one in 1973.
They literally created the CFP as a reaction to the four wanting to join. It was a grab for booty pure and simple. All the fine talk of esprit communautaire was just that- talk. It would’ve been far better for the EEC to have left this well alone, but no, they felt they had the whip hand and they used it. The result was it went on to the list of things we weren’t entirely comfortable with, with the rebate, FOM, the ECJ etc. Niggling like a stone in a shoe. It even played a role in 2016 when Geldof decided to sail down the Thames to have an “easy” go at Farage and ended up being confronted by some fisher folk.
It was all so unnecessary by the EEC/EU, precisely because it is such a small industry. But here we are 50 years on and it’s a major issue now way out of all proportion to its monetary worth.
The EU overplaying it’s strong hand (again!!!) in microcosm.
They literally created the CFP as a reaction to the four wanting to join. It was a grab for booty pure and simple.
That's a little simplistic.
The founding principle of the EU is the free movement of goods, services and people. That means that the British box system, which allowed only UK and Irish fishermen to own rights to fish in the jointly administered territorial waters of the UK and Ireland.
Not allowing those to be owned by non-British/Irish entities would have breached the "free movement" clause of the treaties, and so the CFP was created. And for a decade or so, only UK and Irish fishermen owned these quotas.
With the accession of two more countries with Atlantic fishing (Spain and Portugal), we started to see industrial fishing vessels and fleets that displaced 10x what a smaller British trawler did. With just twice the number of people, they could catch 10x the fish. And so, the Spanish fishing concerns bought up quotas from British fishermen, as they could pay the equivalent of 10 years or so of fishing revenues for them - and the fisherman wouldn't have to get up early to do back breaking work.
Sorry Robert but this is wrong. Or at least misleading. Prior to the UK/Denmark/Ireland accession there was no CFP for the existing EEC countries fishing in the North Sea, the Baltic or the Med. They were perfectly happy for fishing to be a national competence before then. It was only when those countries with very large fishing areas - the UK, Ireland and Norway - were looking to join that the CFP was devised. That gave quotas for fishing in British and Irish waters (the Norwegians had more sense than to join in the end) to other EEC countries from the very start.
On fishing, I'd be very surprised if Boris gave way. It may not be economically important, but it's hugely useful in Scotland politically. And we've seen BJ waking up to the Scottish problem. SNP hate it when they are accused of wanting to hand fishing back to the EU - no plausible answer to the charge.
On Indy, generally. I'm struck how strong Starmer and his Shadow SoS for Scotland, Ian Murray are on the subject. They are not going to allow themselves to be stitched up as Sturgeon puppets as Miliband was. Boris can rule out IndyRef2 with impunity.
Another counter-intuitive thought at a time of Sturgeon worship. The SNP's strength is its ability to draw support from Left and Right in Scotland. But that can also be its weakness. Beyond a hardcore of, say, 20% or so, who put Indy above all else, they are vulnerable to being squeezed if politics becomes about economics and services. We saw in 2017 how they were rattled by Scots Tory revival. Labour, if they get their act together, are far more dangerous than the Tories as most Scots feel fairly benign to the party. They could revive. Stranger things have happened (as we have seen).
Unionist golden bullet #12,451
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Roger’s cousin MP.
Well, who would have expected SCUP to put a spanner in the works in '17?. Things change. Will be interesting to see if the famous 54% poll is a trend (or not).
Polls.
SCUP flatlined on about 15% for 20 years. Looked unrevivable. SLAB, it seems to me, has much more potential to recover. Just need a decent and plausible leader. They now have a decent UK leader which is another precondition, and the prospect of the politics of economic recovery overtaking the constitution as the prevailing concern - which is on its way, once the pandemic recedes.
That does strike one as a somewhat optimistic take on SLAB's prospects. As with absolutely everything else in Scottish politics, the recovery will be viewed through the prism of sovereignty: the Scottish Government will simply condemn whatever the UK Government does as insufficient and/or incompetent and state that it could do a lot better if it controlled all the Treasury's levers itself. And all of its supporters will agree.
Nobody who has already switched to the independence side of the argument is in the least bit interested in what Labour has to say about anything.
I would opine that fishing was irrelevant to most people voting for leave. It was immigration
You're a one tracked individual then. The vote wasn't so narrow minded as that. I couldn't care less about immigration but care about sovereignty and the fish are our sovereign natural resource.
If there was a common oil policy and the EU was taking away our North Sea oil without us getting the revenues from it that would bother me too. The fact it's fish isn't here nor there the subject isn't that important what is important is the EU taking away a valuable resource that should be ours.
If I were to say that sometimes you appear to fetishize the Nation State it might be deeply unfair - and I apologize if it would be - but it would be no less than the truth as I sometimes sense it.
I would hope he does fetishize it. The Nation State with an accountable government is one of the fundamental building blocks of a democratic system.
Yes, you too. Definitely. Sorry for missing you out there.
I am genuinely sorry that you do not hold the Nation State in the same respect. Without it we would be hard pressed to maintain our democracy.
I'm happy to contemplate a world of peacefully co-existing Nation States none of whom are seeking to "make themselves great" or any of that nationalistic nonsense.
Unfortunately some of them - including the two biggest and most powerful - do not seem to share my vision at the present time.
So you want a world of mediocrity?
How uninspiring.
"Peacefully co-existing, non-nationalistic nation states = A world of mediocrity" -
That's your problem right there.
You cut out "none of whom are seeking to "make themselves great""
So yes peaceful coexistence is all fine and dandy but you aspire to not even try to be great?
Each person, regardless of what country they live in, should aspire to be the best version of themselves and live the best life they can.
The notion of Nation States trying to be "great" does not thrill me. Happy to leave that to fetishists like you and Tyndall.
I have never said a single word about nation states being 'great'. It is enough that they are indeed nation states and provide the stable cultural, social and political platform necessary for democracy to work. I see nothing 'great' about imposing our will on others although I do believe we have a duty to stand by and help other like minded states to preserve their freedoms.
Boris is obsessed with fishing. Nobody outside of a tiny minority gives a shit about fishing, let’s be real here.
My Scottish family do and with a passion.
Their communities were founded on fishing
And they will be in the tiny minority. North Shields on Tyneside was “founded on fishing” and yet the Fish Quay, whilst still being a working fishing port, is full of edgy bars and flats these days.
It does not mean that fishing is not a big issue in the North East Scottish fishing communities
Fishing is a massive issue Mr G, crazy but true.
If Boris 'betrays' those fishermen (persons?) he can forget leading the tories into the next election and I would doubt the tories would form the next government.
We want those waters. We want to tell Frenchman and Spaniards they cannot fish there even if we don;t want to fish there ourselves. Are we right to want that at the expense of much else? I don;t know, but I know its true.
Fishing really is that big.
Well we shouldn’t have sold them the quotas
Maybe the EEC shouldn’t have dreamt up the Common Fisheries Policy back in the early 70’s just so it could make a grab for fishing rights ( or natural resources as they are) of the then four prospective joiners, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway who just so happened to bring with them vast oceans which the EEC did not possess, but which could force them to hand over as a joining fee of acquis communautaire. Norway voted not to join of course, partly because of this issue I’m sure.
Just imagine if Spain Italy Greece and Portugal joined, and the northerners dreamt up a Common Citrus Fruit Policy and said hand over your lemon groves because we’ve not got any.
It was a total injustice 50 years ago, that may be close to being at least partially righted, and despite its minuscule economic value the whole issue has become far more totemic than Barnier wanted I’m sure. Maybe they should’ve been a bit more circumspect about screwing us over on this in the 70’s in the first place? What goes around and all that.
You must realise how out of touch you are, right?
This 'out of touch' argument seems quite well founded and decently argued to me. Could Gallowgate tell us what's wrong with it?
I already have. @welshowl is treating “fishing” like an issue of significant national importance, when actually no normal person gives a hoot.
It’s not if any great import economically ( a few costal places aside), but it’s symbolic of what was wrong from day one in 1973.
They literally created the CFP as a reaction to the four wanting to join. It was a grab for booty pure and simple. All the fine talk of esprit communautaire was just that- talk. It would’ve been far better for the EEC to have left this well alone, but no, they felt they had the whip hand and they used it. The result was it went on to the list of things we weren’t entirely comfortable with, with the rebate, FOM, the ECJ etc. Niggling like a stone in a shoe. It even played a role in 2016 when Geldof decided to sail down the Thames to have an “easy” go at Farage and ended up being confronted by some fisher folk.
It was all so unnecessary by the EEC/EU, precisely because it is such a small industry. But here we are 50 years on and it’s a major issue now way out of all proportion to its monetary worth.
The EU overplaying it’s strong hand (again!!!) in microcosm.
They literally created the CFP as a reaction to the four wanting to join. It was a grab for booty pure and simple.
That's a little simplistic.
The founding principle of the EU is the free movement of goods, services and people. That means that the British box system, which allowed only UK and Irish fishermen to own rights to fish in the jointly administered territorial waters of the UK and Ireland.
Not allowing those to be owned by non-British/Irish entities would have breached the "free movement" clause of the treaties, and so the CFP was created. And for a decade or so, only UK and Irish fishermen owned these quotas.
With the accession of two more countries with Atlantic fishing (Spain and Portugal), we started to see industrial fishing vessels and fleets that displaced 10x what a smaller British trawler did. With just twice the number of people, they could catch 10x the fish. And so, the Spanish fishing concerns bought up quotas from British fishermen, as they could pay the equivalent of 10 years or so of fishing revenues for them - and the fisherman wouldn't have to get up early to do back breaking work.
Sorry Robert but this is wrong. Or at least misleading. Prior to the UK/Denmark/Ireland accession there was no CFP for the existing EEC countries fishing in the North Sea, the Baltic or the Med. They were perfectly happy for fishing to be a national competence before then. It was only when those countries with very large fishing areas - the UK, Ireland and Norway - were looking to join that the CFP was devised. That gave quotas for fishing in British and Irish waters (the Norwegians had more sense than to join in the end) to other EEC countries from the very start.
On fishing, I'd be very surprised if Boris gave way. It may not be economically important, but it's hugely useful in Scotland politically. And we've seen BJ waking up to the Scottish problem. SNP hate it when they are accused of wanting to hand fishing back to the EU - no plausible answer to the charge.
On Indy, generally. I'm struck how strong Starmer and his Shadow SoS for Scotland, Ian Murray are on the subject. They are not going to allow themselves to be stitched up as Sturgeon puppets as Miliband was. Boris can rule out IndyRef2 with impunity.
Another counter-intuitive thought at a time of Sturgeon worship. The SNP's strength is its ability to draw support from Left and Right in Scotland. But that can also be its weakness. Beyond a hardcore of, say, 20% or so, who put Indy above all else, they are vulnerable to being squeezed if politics becomes about economics and services. We saw in 2017 how they were rattled by Scots Tory revival. Labour, if they get their act together, are far more dangerous than the Tories as most Scots feel fairly benign to the party. They could revive. Stranger things have happened (as we have seen).
Unionist golden bullet #12,451
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Roger’s cousin MP.
Well, who would have expected SCUP to put a spanner in the works in '17?. Things change. Will be interesting to see if the famous 54% poll is a trend (or not).
Polls.
SCUP flatlined on about 15% for 20 years. Looked unrevivable. SLAB, it seems to me, has much more potential to recover. Just need a decent and plausible leader. They now have a decent UK leader which is another precondition, and the prospect of the politics of economic recovery overtaking the constitution as the prevailing concern - which is on its way, once the pandemic recedes.
That does strike one as a somewhat optimistic take on SLAB's prospects. As with absolutely everything else in Scottish politics, the recovery will be viewed through the prism of sovereignty: the Scottish Government will simply condemn whatever the UK Government does as insufficient and/or incompetent and state that it could do a lot better if it controlled all the Treasury's levers itself. And all of its supporters will agree.
Nobody who has already switched to the independence side of the argument is in the least bit interested in what Labour has to say about anything.
In fairness, it's a bit more nuanced than that - quite a few Labour voters voted for indy. But that at once raises the question iof what effect a harder anti-indy policy by Labour HQ in London would have.
Just how much fish are we planning on catching to make up for the economic hit of hard Brexit
Quite. And who is going to buy it? There is a huge mismatch of UK fish catch with the UK internal market. People are going to end up having mackerel and potato for dinner rather than pizza. Or mackerel pizza.
Why wouldn't we just export it? The people currently buying the fish presumably will continue to want to do so.
At least he lived long enough to see his Brexit dream realised.
RIP.
We’re in the promised sunlit uplands already? I must have missed that.
As a gambling man he has probably died at the optimum moment. He saw the vote get won and the decision implemented, in principle if not in practice, but won’t be around to see the slow grinding damage that will be done by erecting barriers between ourselves and our closest neighbours, and our slow but steady loss of influence and credibility on the world stage.
Just how much fish are we planning on catching to make up for the economic hit of hard Brexit
Quite. And who is going to buy it? There is a huge mismatch of UK fish catch with the UK internal market. People are going to end up having mackerel and potato for dinner rather than pizza. Or mackerel pizza.
Why wouldn't we just export it? The people currently buying the fish presumably will continue to want to do so.
Through Dover?!
Would that be the sole route?
It's the main plaice - but in the absence of anything more direct from Scotlan d there's not much to choose. In all seriousness, here is an example of the concern: and that's before (a) tariifs and (b) mr Johnson follows Mr Thatcher and sells out the Scottish fishermen (it's not as if he gives a monkey's for Jock seats, when he has a majority like that, any more than he worried about the DUP when selling NI out by his and their standards):
It will take another three or four months for it to become apparent that the only choice we ever faced was to go back to normal and accept the risks, or face a complete meltdown.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
You don't sound like you hope you are wrong.
Of course I hope I’m wrong as if cases go up the government will force mask wearing every time you go outside which is the case in Spain at the moment.
It’s no great imposition even though it’s 31/32 in the shade. Lots of discussion about what is now required in bars and restaurants and it looks like they need to be worn unless you are actually eating or drinking. This will take some enforcement although to be honest we are wearing our masks round the neck ready to lift glass if police come in. The overall advice is if confronted by police pay up, arguing will double your fine, enforcement starts tomorrow.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
That does assume that mask-wearers will stop washing their hands and will start hugging one another violently. I suggest that this is unlikely...
Interesting pre-print (naturally to be used with caution) from two weeks ago:
'In countries with cultural norms or government policies supporting public mask-wearing, per-capita coronavirus mortality increased on average by just 7.2% each week, as compared with 55.0% each week in remaining countries.'
On fishing it's not an area I especially care about but to think that the fish are our natural resource so we should determine what we do with it. I have 3 questions or thoughts from what I've read here and elsewhere.
1. People speak about rights and quotas having been bought and sold as if it is inalienable and unchangeable. But surely they only exist within the framework of the CFP. If we completely leave the CFP and control our own waters we can determine whatever policies we want going forwards surely?
2. I believe we get a greatly reduced share of the fish in the CFP than we should as it was determined by proportion of fish being taken in community waters in the early 70s not the proportion of waters or fish that should be each nations own resource. Since UK fishermen were at the time fishing in Iceland's waters (until Iceland expelled them) we got a lower than appropriate share which I believe continues to this day.
3. If we were to want to we could claim and legally enforce 200 miles of exclusive waters for ourselves. As Norway and Iceland do. Why shouldn't we?
I don't particularly care about the fish but it's our own natural resource under international maritime laws. Why shouldn't we get the most from our own natural resources? Everyone else seeks to.
Indeed but what about if you had bought a fishing licence in good faith from someone and were suddenly told it was worthless and you couldn't fish. Its a bit like buying farming land from someone in, say, France, and being told you couldn;t farm, isn;t it?
Its not that unusual in the EU though. Various rights which transferred for large sums of money such as Milk quota and the right to various subsidies re livestock have either disappeared or been materially changed in their operation as policies changed. Fishing quota is a man made artificial construct and it is up to us to determine how it is allocated once we are free of CFP commitments.
How fishing quotas are allocated is up to national governments under the CFP and different member states have very different policies.
That is true but as Robert has already pointed out those policies require to be compatible with EU law in respect of freedom of movement for people and businesses. You cannot discriminate in favour of your own population to the detriment of other EU citizens.
And yet there is practically no foreign ownership of French or Dutch fishing quotas.
I think I posted on here a while back the composition of EU countries fishing fleets by displacement / tonnage. The UK had the smallest boat size. Essentially, in most EU countries owner-operated small trawlers had been replaced by industrial fishing vessels, owned by corporations.
And because these vessels were more efficient, and because the companies didn't live hand to mouth, they could borrow to buy up British quotas.
Part of the problem we have is that we're not just trying to preserve British fish stocks for British fishermen, we're also trying to preserve a way of life.
And - really - the threats to that way of life, and the communities that depend on it, goes far beyond Brexit. To protect them, we need to not just have fishing quotas for British waters, but to also require that fish are landed in the UK, and that boats are limited to a maximum size.
Doing that, though, results in British fish being brought ashore at higher cost than those in Spain or France or wherever. And that then requires us to impose tariffs on fish imports, to allow the fishermen to fish economically.
We can do this - but doing this is part of a trade off in our negotiations with other countries over FTAs. How important is protecting a way of life that is economically marginal? And how does that compare to opportunities that might be lost in other parts of the economy?
None of which is actually pertinent to the point that was being discussed and which you raised originally about the UK Government being sued if they remove all quotas from foreign vessels. Something that is very much overstated.
My points are a bit more nuanced.
(1) If you strip quotas from one group of people, but leave them with others, then you open yourself up to legal challenge. If you completely abolished quotas then it's a very different situation. If you started from scratch, i.e. auctioning rights off each year, then you probably wouldn't have a problem. But it would be a disaster for fishing communities.
(2) Even if you made it so only British people and firms could own fishing quotas, you wouldn't necessarily change the amount of fish landed in the UK by Brits. Already a large chunk of British fish quotas are owned by Brits by effectively operated by others who never even dock at UK ports.
(3) We seem unclear as to our ultimate goal. Is it to protect British fishermen? Or is to have an efficient fishing industry? "Taking back control" - to a struggling fisherman - does not mean that rights become British but nothing changes.
1. If you start from scratch and copy the system in other countries where the quotas cannot be sold and revert to the Government if the owner relinquishes control then your supposed problems disappear.
2 easily solved by doing what the UK fishing industry has pressed for and say at least 60% of UK quota boats must be UK crewed and at least 60% of the catch must be landed in the UK.
3. The two are not mutually exclusive. I would certainly ban the large factory fishing vessels not just on the grounds of protecting UK fishermen but also (actually more so) for environmental reasons.
As I see it, there is no reason for example why these can't be a publicly owned resource rented for a period at a time. Or any other lawful arrangement we wish to adopt.
At least he lived long enough to see his Brexit dream realised.
RIP.
We’re in the promised sunlit uplands already? I must have missed that.
As a gambling man he has probably died at the optimum moment. He saw the vote get won and the decision implemented, in principle if not in practice, but won’t be around to see the slow grinding damage that will be done by erecting barriers between ourselves and our closest neighbours, and our slow but steady loss of influence and credibility on the world stage.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
There were not enough masks to go around in March, how does mask wearing make things worse? Whilst not wishing it on the UK I fully expect them to follow the outbreak profile becoming apparent in Spain and France given they have done nothing to avoid it.
On fishing it's not an area I especially care about but to think that the fish are our natural resource so we should determine what we do with it. I have 3 questions or thoughts from what I've read here and elsewhere.
1. People speak about rights and quotas having been bought and sold as if it is inalienable and unchangeable. But surely they only exist within the framework of the CFP. If we completely leave the CFP and control our own waters we can determine whatever policies we want going forwards surely?
2. I believe we get a greatly reduced share of the fish in the CFP than we should as it was determined by proportion of fish being taken in community waters in the early 70s not the proportion of waters or fish that should be each nations own resource. Since UK fishermen were at the time fishing in Iceland's waters (until Iceland expelled them) we got a lower than appropriate share which I believe continues to this day.
3. If we were to want to we could claim and legally enforce 200 miles of exclusive waters for ourselves. As Norway and Iceland do. Why shouldn't we?
I don't particularly care about the fish but it's our own natural resource under international maritime laws. Why shouldn't we get the most from our own natural resources? Everyone else seeks to.
Indeed but what about if you had bought a fishing licence in good faith from someone and were suddenly told it was worthless and you couldn't fish. Its a bit like buying farming land from someone in, say, France, and being told you couldn;t farm, isn;t it?
Its not that unusual in the EU though. Various rights which transferred for large sums of money such as Milk quota and the right to various subsidies re livestock have either disappeared or been materially changed in their operation as policies changed. Fishing quota is a man made artificial construct and it is up to us to determine how it is allocated once we are free of CFP commitments.
How fishing quotas are allocated is up to national governments under the CFP and different member states have very different policies.
That is true but as Robert has already pointed out those policies require to be compatible with EU law in respect of freedom of movement for people and businesses. You cannot discriminate in favour of your own population to the detriment of other EU citizens.
And yet there is practically no foreign ownership of French or Dutch fishing quotas.
I think I posted on here a while back the composition of EU countries fishing fleets by displacement / tonnage. The UK had the smallest boat size. Essentially, in most EU countries owner-operated small trawlers had been replaced by industrial fishing vessels, owned by corporations.
And because these vessels were more efficient, and because the companies didn't live hand to mouth, they could borrow to buy up British quotas.
Part of the problem we have is that we're not just trying to preserve British fish stocks for British fishermen, we're also trying to preserve a way of life.
And - really - the threats to that way of life, and the communities that depend on it, goes far beyond Brexit. To protect them, we need to not just have fishing quotas for British waters, but to also require that fish are landed in the UK, and that boats are limited to a maximum size.
Doing that, though, results in British fish being brought ashore at higher cost than those in Spain or France or wherever. And that then requires us to impose tariffs on fish imports, to allow the fishermen to fish economically.
We can do this - but doing this is part of a trade off in our negotiations with other countries over FTAs. How important is protecting a way of life that is economically marginal? And how does that compare to opportunities that might be lost in other parts of the economy?
None of which is actually pertinent to the point that was being discussed and which you raised originally about the UK Government being sued if they remove all quotas from foreign vessels. Something that is very much overstated.
My points are a bit more nuanced.
(1) If you strip quotas from one group of people, but leave them with others, then you open yourself up to legal challenge. If you completely abolished quotas then it's a very different situation. If you started from scratch, i.e. auctioning rights off each year, then you probably wouldn't have a problem. But it would be a disaster for fishing communities.
(2) Even if you made it so only British people and firms could own fishing quotas, you wouldn't necessarily change the amount of fish landed in the UK by Brits. Already a large chunk of British fish quotas are owned by Brits by effectively operated by others who never even dock at UK ports.
(3) We seem unclear as to our ultimate goal. Is it to protect British fishermen? Or is to have an efficient fishing industry? "Taking back control" - to a struggling fisherman - does not mean that rights become British but nothing changes.
1. If you start from scratch and copy the system in other countries where the quotas cannot be sold and revert to the Government if the owner relinquishes control then your supposed problems disappear.
2 easily solved by doing what the UK fishing industry has pressed for and say at least 60% of UK quota boats must be UK crewed and at least 60% of the catch must be landed in the UK.
3. The two are not mutually exclusive. I would certainly ban the large factory fishing vessels not just on the grounds of protecting UK fishermen but also (actually more so) for environmental reasons.
THose are criticval issues, so really good to see you variously discussing them.
And yet stripping holders of quotas does huge damage to the fishing barons. The great Brexit supporters. Is that plausible?
And whilst I am at it did the collapse of the Soviet Empire come from: (a) The inability of a command economy to compete with an innovative free market economy; (b) the pressure applied by Reagan's increase in the conventional capability of the US; (c) a combination of (a) and (b) or (d) Amnesty International's campaigns about prisoners of conscience?
The idea that the Chinese will be influenced by similar protests is almost funny, in a sad kind of way.
OTOH, "people power" can be awesome. Over time irresistible. For example, if the population of Hong Kong resist Chinese oppression en masse, I do not share the view of many that China will simply roll them over. I think China would have a big problem in such circumstances. I don't think they will do a Tiananmen in a place like HK in today's exposed world.
And a thought on (a). Yes, totally right as regards the USSR. But in the current wrangling with China there is a touch of the opposite - the inability of our mixed economy to compete with their state directed capitalism.
I think that you are being seriously and indeed dangerously optimistic about HK. On trade the Chinese are very successfully implementing mercantilsm, something our free trade fanatics still tell us doesn't work.
I wouldn't say I feel exactly optimistic about HK. It's part of China and will be integrated over time. But I don't see China brutally suppressing mass resistance if there is mass resistance. I think they'll need to find a way other than that to gradually impose their will. No Tiananmen Square in the offing.
It would be grossly immoral, disgraceful, if we gave any hint to the brave people of HK that we were going to intervene in any way to save them when that is beyond our power. And I fear that is what is going to happen when they read too much into our leaders highly principled nonsense. I think we are going to end up with blood on our hands.
They are very brave. Those who risk their lives and welfare opposing powerful oppressive regimes are amazing people.
And that would indeed be appalling if we were to foment a rebellion and then seek to wash our hands of it.
I think that there is a big gap between the UK speaking out about what is going on there and trying to do something (and possibly over promising) and suggesting the UK has such influence that its actions could count as 'fomenting a rebellion'. That would seem to place far too high a responsibility on the UK over both the chinese authorities and the agency of the people of Hong Kong. We're clearly involved and I think DavidL's concerns about most things beyond our power and people potentially suffering as a result is not unfounded, but there is a danger of ascribing too much influence to our politicians and thus blaming them unfairly when things go very bad.
The Chinese will be having a good laugh at Raab and company. Not even paper tigers.
According to my Chinese friends, Huawei is making Xi & Co savagely angry.
The HK residency thing also making them spitting mad - apparently the pro-CCP types on social media* are demanding that anyone with a British HK passport give it up or be declared a traitor.
The other thing that would hurt is putting officials on the sanctioned list.
A member of the family works in very high end retail - her stories of wives on phones to their husbands, when they realise the bank accounts/cards are blocked by the UK processing systems....
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
You don't sound like you hope you are wrong.
Of course I hope I’m wrong as if cases go up the government will force mask wearing every time you go outside which is the case in Spain at the moment.
I'm worried that this is where we are headed. Ordering masks everywhere suits the Government because it can be seen to be "doing something," irrespective of whether or not said something is to any significant degree useful.
Regardless of the established very low risk of contracting the disease in the open air, and the fact that its prevalence is also very low in most of the country, the *theoretical* difference that masking *might* make can be used to justify imposing it in virtually all situations.
Give it a couple of months and it'll be illegal to walk alone across an empty field without a rag on your face. In practice, however, mask wearing in such situations is effectively unenforceable and is liable to be disregarded by a large fraction of the population. If enough people are sufficiently sceptical of it then it might even fail to catch on properly in shops, unless the staff have been instructed to apply the rule strictly - and businesses have already been told that they aren't responsible for doing so.
On fishing it's not an area I especially care about but to think that the fish are our natural resource so we should determine what we do with it. I have 3 questions or thoughts from what I've read here and elsewhere.
1. People speak about rights and quotas having been bought and sold as if it is inalienable and unchangeable. But surely they only exist within the framework of the CFP. If we completely leave the CFP and control our own waters we can determine whatever policies we want going forwards surely?
2. I believe we get a greatly reduced share of the fish in the CFP than we should as it was determined by proportion of fish being taken in community waters in the early 70s not the proportion of waters or fish that should be each nations own resource. Since UK fishermen were at the time fishing in Iceland's waters (until Iceland expelled them) we got a lower than appropriate share which I believe continues to this day.
3. If we were to want to we could claim and legally enforce 200 miles of exclusive waters for ourselves. As Norway and Iceland do. Why shouldn't we?
I don't particularly care about the fish but it's our own natural resource under international maritime laws. Why shouldn't we get the most from our own natural resources? Everyone else seeks to.
Indeed but what about if you had bought a fishing licence in good faith from someone and were suddenly told it was worthless and you couldn't fish. Its a bit like buying farming land from someone in, say, France, and being told you couldn;t farm, isn;t it?
Its not that unusual in the EU though. Various rights which transferred for large sums of money such as Milk quota and the right to various subsidies re livestock have either disappeared or been materially changed in their operation as policies changed. Fishing quota is a man made artificial construct and it is up to us to determine how it is allocated once we are free of CFP commitments.
How fishing quotas are allocated is up to national governments under the CFP and different member states have very different policies.
That is true but as Robert has already pointed out those policies require to be compatible with EU law in respect of freedom of movement for people and businesses. You cannot discriminate in favour of your own population to the detriment of other EU citizens.
And yet there is practically no foreign ownership of French or Dutch fishing quotas.
I think I posted on here a while back the composition of EU countries fishing fleets by displacement / tonnage. The UK had the smallest boat size. Essentially, in most EU countries owner-operated small trawlers had been replaced by industrial fishing vessels, owned by corporations.
And because these vessels were more efficient, and because the companies didn't live hand to mouth, they could borrow to buy up British quotas.
Part of the problem we have is that we're not just trying to preserve British fish stocks for British fishermen, we're also trying to preserve a way of life.
And - really - the threats to that way of life, and the communities that depend on it, goes far beyond Brexit. To protect them, we need to not just have fishing quotas for British waters, but to also require that fish are landed in the UK, and that boats are limited to a maximum size.
Doing that, though, results in British fish being brought ashore at higher cost than those in Spain or France or wherever. And that then requires us to impose tariffs on fish imports, to allow the fishermen to fish economically.
We can do this - but doing this is part of a trade off in our negotiations with other countries over FTAs. How important is protecting a way of life that is economically marginal? And how does that compare to opportunities that might be lost in other parts of the economy?
None of which is actually pertinent to the point that was being discussed and which you raised originally about the UK Government being sued if they remove all quotas from foreign vessels. Something that is very much overstated.
My points are a bit more nuanced.
(1) If you strip quotas from one group of people, but leave them with others, then you open yourself up to legal challenge. If you completely abolished quotas then it's a very different situation. If you started from scratch, i.e. auctioning rights off each year, then you probably wouldn't have a problem. But it would be a disaster for fishing communities.
(2) Even if you made it so only British people and firms could own fishing quotas, you wouldn't necessarily change the amount of fish landed in the UK by Brits. Already a large chunk of British fish quotas are owned by Brits by effectively operated by others who never even dock at UK ports.
(3) We seem unclear as to our ultimate goal. Is it to protect British fishermen? Or is to have an efficient fishing industry? "Taking back control" - to a struggling fisherman - does not mean that rights become British but nothing changes.
1. If you start from scratch and copy the system in other countries where the quotas cannot be sold and revert to the Government if the owner relinquishes control then your supposed problems disappear.
2 easily solved by doing what the UK fishing industry has pressed for and say at least 60% of UK quota boats must be UK crewed and at least 60% of the catch must be landed in the UK.
3. The two are not mutually exclusive. I would certainly ban the large factory fishing vessels not just on the grounds of protecting UK fishermen but also (actually more so) for environmental reasons.
THose are criticval issues, so really good to see you variously discussing them.
And yet stripping holders of quotas does huge damage to the fishing barons. The great Brexit supporters. Is that plausible?
Not sure it is politically plausible but I would hope that Sturgeon would have the gumption to do it. Personally I think she would. Not to say they would not go back to them again if the fulfilled the criteria but I would also like to see them distributed on a more equitable basis and not just auctioned off to the highest bidder. Again I would more faith in Scotland achieving that than England at present.
I would opine that fishing was irrelevant to most people voting for leave. It was immigration
You're a one tracked individual then. The vote wasn't so narrow minded as that. I couldn't care less about immigration but care about sovereignty and the fish are our sovereign natural resource.
If there was a common oil policy and the EU was taking away our North Sea oil without us getting the revenues from it that would bother me too. The fact it's fish isn't here nor there the subject isn't that important what is important is the EU taking away a valuable resource that should be ours.
If I were to say that sometimes you appear to fetishize the Nation State it might be deeply unfair - and I apologize if it would be - but it would be no less than the truth as I sometimes sense it.
I would hope he does fetishize it. The Nation State with an accountable government is one of the fundamental building blocks of a democratic system.
Yes, you too. Definitely. Sorry for missing you out there.
I am genuinely sorry that you do not hold the Nation State in the same respect. Without it we would be hard pressed to maintain our democracy.
I'm happy to contemplate a world of peacefully co-existing Nation States none of whom are seeking to "make themselves great" or any of that nationalistic nonsense.
Unfortunately some of them - including the two biggest and most powerful - do not seem to share my vision at the present time.
So you want a world of mediocrity?
How uninspiring.
"Peacefully co-existing, non-nationalistic nation states = A world of mediocrity" -
That's your problem right there.
You cut out "none of whom are seeking to "make themselves great""
So yes peaceful coexistence is all fine and dandy but you aspire to not even try to be great?
Each person, regardless of what country they live in, should aspire to be the best version of themselves and live the best life they can.
The notion of Nation States trying to be "great" does not thrill me. Happy to leave that to fetishists like you and Tyndall.
I have never said a single word about nation states being 'great'. It is enough that they are indeed nation states and provide the stable cultural, social and political platform necessary for democracy to work. I see nothing 'great' about imposing our will on others although I do believe we have a duty to stand by and help other like minded states to preserve their freedoms.
OK sorry - inappropriate coupling with another poster. Yes the nation state can be a valuable and suitable entity for those purposes. I will agree that much.
As regards greatness. A country that creates a prosperous and peaceful society, free from ugly inequalities of class or race or gender, that plays its full part in seeking to solve global problems, and that seeks only win/win relationships with other countries - this is the only form of National Greatness that I have any interest in.
And it's challenging enough for anybody. The rest of the "greatness" bullshit is typically a ruse to prevent people noticing that it isn't happening.
At least he lived long enough to see his Brexit dream realised.
RIP.
We’re in the promised sunlit uplands already? I must have missed that.
As a gambling man he has probably died at the optimum moment. He saw the vote get won and the decision implemented, in principle if not in practice, but won’t be around to see the slow grinding damage that will be done by erecting barriers between ourselves and our closest neighbours, and our slow but steady loss of influence and credibility on the world stage.
It must be sad to be such an eternal pessimist.
On the contrary, it is continually uplifting that things generally turn out to be at least no worse than I was expecting.
On fishing it's not an area I especially care about but to think that the fish are our natural resource so we should determine what we do with it. I have 3 questions or thoughts from what I've read here and elsewhere.
1. People speak about rights and quotas having been bought and sold as if it is inalienable and unchangeable. But surely they only exist within the framework of the CFP. If we completely leave the CFP and control our own waters we can determine whatever policies we want going forwards surely?
2. I believe we get a greatly reduced share of the fish in the CFP than we should as it was determined by proportion of fish being taken in community waters in the early 70s not the proportion of waters or fish that should be each nations own resource. Since UK fishermen were at the time fishing in Iceland's waters (until Iceland expelled them) we got a lower than appropriate share which I believe continues to this day.
3. If we were to want to we could claim and legally enforce 200 miles of exclusive waters for ourselves. As Norway and Iceland do. Why shouldn't we?
I don't particularly care about the fish but it's our own natural resource under international maritime laws. Why shouldn't we get the most from our own natural resources? Everyone else seeks to.
Indeed but what about if you had bought a fishing licence in good faith from someone and were suddenly told it was worthless and you couldn't fish. Its a bit like buying farming land from someone in, say, France, and being told you couldn;t farm, isn;t it?
Its not that unusual in the EU though. Various rights which transferred for large sums of money such as Milk quota and the right to various subsidies re livestock have either disappeared or been materially changed in their operation as policies changed. Fishing quota is a man made artificial construct and it is up to us to determine how it is allocated once we are free of CFP commitments.
How fishing quotas are allocated is up to national governments under the CFP and different member states have very different policies.
That is true but as Robert has already pointed out those policies require to be compatible with EU law in respect of freedom of movement for people and businesses. You cannot discriminate in favour of your own population to the detriment of other EU citizens.
And yet there is practically no foreign ownership of French or Dutch fishing quotas.
I think I posted on here a while back the composition of EU countries fishing fleets by displacement / tonnage. The UK had the smallest boat size. Essentially, in most EU countries owner-operated small trawlers had been replaced by industrial fishing vessels, owned by corporations.
And because these vessels were more efficient, and because the companies didn't live hand to mouth, they could borrow to buy up British quotas.
Part of the problem we have is that we're not just trying to preserve British fish stocks for British fishermen, we're also trying to preserve a way of life.
And - really - the threats to that way of life, and the communities that depend on it, goes far beyond Brexit. To protect them, we need to not just have fishing quotas for British waters, but to also require that fish are landed in the UK, and that boats are limited to a maximum size.
Doing that, though, results in British fish being brought ashore at higher cost than those in Spain or France or wherever. And that then requires us to impose tariffs on fish imports, to allow the fishermen to fish economically.
We can do this - but doing this is part of a trade off in our negotiations with other countries over FTAs. How important is protecting a way of life that is economically marginal? And how does that compare to opportunities that might be lost in other parts of the economy?
None of which is actually pertinent to the point that was being discussed and which you raised originally about the UK Government being sued if they remove all quotas from foreign vessels. Something that is very much overstated.
My points are a bit more nuanced.
(1) If you strip quotas from one group of people, but leave them with others, then you open yourself up to legal challenge. If you completely abolished quotas then it's a very different situation. If you started from scratch, i.e. auctioning rights off each year, then you probably wouldn't have a problem. But it would be a disaster for fishing communities.
(2) Even if you made it so only British people and firms could own fishing quotas, you wouldn't necessarily change the amount of fish landed in the UK by Brits. Already a large chunk of British fish quotas are owned by Brits by effectively operated by others who never even dock at UK ports.
(3) We seem unclear as to our ultimate goal. Is it to protect British fishermen? Or is to have an efficient fishing industry? "Taking back control" - to a struggling fisherman - does not mean that rights become British but nothing changes.
1. If you start from scratch and copy the system in other countries where the quotas cannot be sold and revert to the Government if the owner relinquishes control then your supposed problems disappear.
2 easily solved by doing what the UK fishing industry has pressed for and say at least 60% of UK quota boats must be UK crewed and at least 60% of the catch must be landed in the UK.
3. The two are not mutually exclusive. I would certainly ban the large factory fishing vessels not just on the grounds of protecting UK fishermen but also (actually more so) for environmental reasons.
THose are criticval issues, so really good to see you variously discussing them.
And yet stripping holders of quotas does huge damage to the fishing barons. The great Brexit supporters. Is that plausible?
Not sure it is politically plausible but I would hope that Sturgeon would have the gumption to do it. Personally I think she would. Not to say they would not go back to them again if the fulfilled the criteria but I would also like to see them distributed on a more equitable basis and not just auctioned off to the highest bidder. Again I would more faith in Scotland achieving that than England at present.
That's an interesting assessment. Not least because London might try to seize control of the process, which would be another barrel of lugworms entirely.
First, thanks to @Philip_Thompson and others for their kind words concerning my brother's health.
I spoke to him today - he is doing well - but there must be others like him who are trapped by the virus. They have it, they are carriers but cannot currently get rid of it. We also know from @Foxy and others that for some recovery from coronavirus isn't complete and there are significant long-term medical and physical impacts even if one survives the initial virus.
There seems an assumption you get the virus and you get better but that's simplistic and naive. For some, it's not "better" and it's not back to where they were. I can't understand why people continue to treat this virus with such contempt - it's a horrible thing which for thousands has been fatal and with which many thousands of others will have to live for years to come.
As I see it, there is no reason for example why these can't be a publicly owned resource rented for a period at a time. Or any other lawful arrangement we wish to adopt.
Yep it is quite remarkable that the EEC rushed through the new regulations just hours before the formal applications were due to arrive just to make sure the CFP became part of the acquis communitaire. It puts the lie to the idea that this was just us signing up for business as usual rather than a power grab for North Sea fishing rights.
It will take another three or four months for it to become apparent that the only choice we ever faced was to go back to normal and accept the risks, or face a complete meltdown.
For my brother, there is no "choice" as you call it. He is trapped by and with the virus and there are many like him.
It's not all about "economic meltdown" as you put it.
First, thanks to @Philip_Thompson and others for their kind words concerning my brother's health.
I spoke to him today - he is doing well - but there must be others like him who are trapped by the virus. They have it, they are carriers but cannot currently get rid of it. We also know from @Foxy and others that for some recovery from coronavirus isn't complete and there are significant long-term medical and physical impacts even if one survives the initial virus.
There seems an assumption you get the virus and you get better but that's simplistic and naive. For some, it's not "better" and it's not back to where they were. I can't understand why people continue to treat this virus with such contempt - it's a horrible thing which for thousands has been fatal and with which many thousands of others will have to live for years to come.
This is an excellent and important post. The virus is plainly about debility and even permanent disability as much as death.
On fishing it's not an area I especially care about but to think that the fish are our natural resource so we should determine what we do with it. I have 3 questions or thoughts from what I've read here and elsewhere.
1. People speak about rights and quotas having been bought and sold as if it is inalienable and unchangeable. But surely they only exist within the framework of the CFP. If we completely leave the CFP and control our own waters we can determine whatever policies we want going forwards surely?
2. I believe we get a greatly reduced share of the fish in the CFP than we should as it was determined by proportion of fish being taken in community waters in the early 70s not the proportion of waters or fish that should be each nations own resource. Since UK fishermen were at the time fishing in Iceland's waters (until Iceland expelled them) we got a lower than appropriate share which I believe continues to this day.
3. If we were to want to we could claim and legally enforce 200 miles of exclusive waters for ourselves. As Norway and Iceland do. Why shouldn't we?
I don't particularly care about the fish but it's our own natural resource under international maritime laws. Why shouldn't we get the most from our own natural resources? Everyone else seeks to.
Indeed but what about if you had bought a fishing licence in good faith from someone and were suddenly told it was worthless and you couldn't fish. Its a bit like buying farming land from someone in, say, France, and being told you couldn;t farm, isn;t it?
Its not that unusual in the EU though. Various rights which transferred for large sums of money such as Milk quota and the right to various subsidies re livestock have either disappeared or been materially changed in their operation as policies changed. Fishing quota is a man made artificial construct and it is up to us to determine how it is allocated once we are free of CFP commitments.
How fishing quotas are allocated is up to national governments under the CFP and different member states have very different policies.
That is true but as Robert has already pointed out those policies require to be compatible with EU law in respect of freedom of movement for people and businesses. You cannot discriminate in favour of your own population to the detriment of other EU citizens.
And yet there is practically no foreign ownership of French or Dutch fishing quotas.
I think I posted on here a while back the composition of EU countries fishing fleets by displacement / tonnage. The UK had the smallest boat size. Essentially, in most EU countries owner-operated small trawlers had been replaced by industrial fishing vessels, owned by corporations.
And because these vessels were more efficient, and because the companies didn't live hand to mouth, they could borrow to buy up British quotas.
Part of the problem we have is that we're not just trying to preserve British fish stocks for British fishermen, we're also trying to preserve a way of life.
And - really - the threats to that way of life, and the communities that depend on it, goes far beyond Brexit. To protect them, we need to not just have fishing quotas for British waters, but to also require that fish are landed in the UK, and that boats are limited to a maximum size.
Doing that, though, results in British fish being brought ashore at higher cost than those in Spain or France or wherever. And that then requires us to impose tariffs on fish imports, to allow the fishermen to fish economically.
We can do this - but doing this is part of a trade off in our negotiations with other countries over FTAs. How important is protecting a way of life that is economically marginal? And how does that compare to opportunities that might be lost in other parts of the economy?
None of which is actually pertinent to the point that was being discussed and which you raised originally about the UK Government being sued if they remove all quotas from foreign vessels. Something that is very much overstated.
My points are a bit more nuanced.
(1) If you strip quotas from one group of people, but leave them with others, then you open yourself up to legal challenge. If you completely abolished quotas then it's a very different situation. If you started from scratch, i.e. auctioning rights off each year, then you probably wouldn't have a problem. But it would be a disaster for fishing communities.
(2) Even if you made it so only British people and firms could own fishing quotas, you wouldn't necessarily change the amount of fish landed in the UK by Brits. Already a large chunk of British fish quotas are owned by Brits by effectively operated by others who never even dock at UK ports.
(3) We seem unclear as to our ultimate goal. Is it to protect British fishermen? Or is to have an efficient fishing industry? "Taking back control" - to a struggling fisherman - does not mean that rights become British but nothing changes.
1. If you start from scratch and copy the system in other countries where the quotas cannot be sold and revert to the Government if the owner relinquishes control then your supposed problems disappear.
2 easily solved by doing what the UK fishing industry has pressed for and say at least 60% of UK quota boats must be UK crewed and at least 60% of the catch must be landed in the UK.
3. The two are not mutually exclusive. I would certainly ban the large factory fishing vessels not just on the grounds of protecting UK fishermen but also (actually more so) for environmental reasons.
THose are criticval issues, so really good to see you variously discussing them.
And yet stripping holders of quotas does huge damage to the fishing barons. The great Brexit supporters. Is that plausible?
Not sure it is politically plausible but I would hope that Sturgeon would have the gumption to do it. Personally I think she would. Not to say they would not go back to them again if the fulfilled the criteria but I would also like to see them distributed on a more equitable basis and not just auctioned off to the highest bidder. Again I would more faith in Scotland achieving that than England at present.
That's an interesting assessment. Not least because London might try to seize control of the process, which would be another barrel of lugworms entirely.
I am sure they might. In this case it would be more interesting and certainly more controversial than the power grabs already underway on returning powers since the awarding of quotas is already devolved to the individual Parliaments so there could be no pretence of anything other than taking powers away from Holyrood.
I must confess I was beginning to wonder. As the Rasmussen crosstabs are behind a paywall (as are the Trafalgar ones), I simply don't know how their sampling is different from other pollsters but the current +2 lead for Biden sticks out like an outlier (as does the +15 lead from Quinnipiac).
The latter has now produced a +13 lead for Biden in Florida (51-38) while St Pete Polls has Biden ahead 50-44.
We also had the Hill/Harris X poll last evening - Biden leads 45-38 in that. The regional split has Biden up 45-39 in the North East which seems remarkably good for Trump and 45-38 in the Midwest which seems remarkably good for Biden. Biden up 50-32 in the West and 42-41 in the South.
Biden leads 47-37 among White voters (really?). Among men Biden leads 44-42 (really again?) and among women by 47-34.
On fishing it's not an area I especially care about but to think that the fish are our natural resource so we should determine what we do with it. I have 3 questions or thoughts from what I've read here and elsewhere.
1. People speak about rights and quotas having been bought and sold as if it is inalienable and unchangeable. But surely they only exist within the framework of the CFP. If we completely leave the CFP and control our own waters we can determine whatever policies we want going forwards surely?
2. I believe we get a greatly reduced share of the fish in the CFP than we should as it was determined by proportion of fish being taken in community waters in the early 70s not the proportion of waters or fish that should be each nations own resource. Since UK fishermen were at the time fishing in Iceland's waters (until Iceland expelled them) we got a lower than appropriate share which I believe continues to this day.
3. If we were to want to we could claim and legally enforce 200 miles of exclusive waters for ourselves. As Norway and Iceland do. Why shouldn't we?
I don't particularly care about the fish but it's our own natural resource under international maritime laws. Why shouldn't we get the most from our own natural resources? Everyone else seeks to.
Indeed but what about if you had bought a fishing licence in good faith from someone and were suddenly told it was worthless and you couldn't fish. Its a bit like buying farming land from someone in, say, France, and being told you couldn;t farm, isn;t it?
Its not that unusual in the EU though. Various rights which transferred for large sums of money such as Milk quota and the right to various subsidies re livestock have either disappeared or been materially changed in their operation as policies changed. Fishing quota is a man made artificial construct and it is up to us to determine how it is allocated once we are free of CFP commitments.
How fishing quotas are allocated is up to national governments under the CFP and different member states have very different policies.
That is true but as Robert has already pointed out those policies require to be compatible with EU law in respect of freedom of movement for people and businesses. You cannot discriminate in favour of your own population to the detriment of other EU citizens.
And yet there is practically no foreign ownership of French or Dutch fishing quotas.
I think I posted on here a while back the composition of EU countries fishing fleets by displacement / tonnage. The UK had the smallest boat size. Essentially, in most EU countries owner-operated small trawlers had been replaced by industrial fishing vessels, owned by corporations.
And because these vessels were more efficient, and because the companies didn't live hand to mouth, they could borrow to buy up British quotas.
Part of the problem we have is that we're not just trying to preserve British fish stocks for British fishermen, we're also trying to preserve a way of life.
And - really - the threats to that way of life, and the communities that depend on it, goes far beyond Brexit. To protect them, we need to not just have fishing quotas for British waters, but to also require that fish are landed in the UK, and that boats are limited to a maximum size.
Doing that, though, results in British fish being brought ashore at higher cost than those in Spain or France or wherever. And that then requires us to impose tariffs on fish imports, to allow the fishermen to fish economically.
We can do this - but doing this is part of a trade off in our negotiations with other countries over FTAs. How important is protecting a way of life that is economically marginal? And how does that compare to opportunities that might be lost in other parts of the economy?
None of which is actually pertinent to the point that was being discussed and which you raised originally about the UK Government being sued if they remove all quotas from foreign vessels. Something that is very much overstated.
My points are a bit more nuanced.
(1) If you strip quotas from one group of people, but leave them with others, then you open yourself up to legal challenge. If you completely abolished quotas then it's a very different situation. If you started from scratch, i.e. auctioning rights off each year, then you probably wouldn't have a problem. But it would be a disaster for fishing communities.
(2) Even if you made it so only British people and firms could own fishing quotas, you wouldn't necessarily change the amount of fish landed in the UK by Brits. Already a large chunk of British fish quotas are owned by Brits by effectively operated by others who never even dock at UK ports.
(3) We seem unclear as to our ultimate goal. Is it to protect British fishermen? Or is to have an efficient fishing industry? "Taking back control" - to a struggling fisherman - does not mean that rights become British but nothing changes.
1. If you start from scratch and copy the system in other countries where the quotas cannot be sold and revert to the Government if the owner relinquishes control then your supposed problems disappear.
2 easily solved by doing what the UK fishing industry has pressed for and say at least 60% of UK quota boats must be UK crewed and at least 60% of the catch must be landed in the UK.
3. The two are not mutually exclusive. I would certainly ban the large factory fishing vessels not just on the grounds of protecting UK fishermen but also (actually more so) for environmental reasons.
THose are criticval issues, so really good to see you variously discussing them.
And yet stripping holders of quotas does huge damage to the fishing barons. The great Brexit supporters. Is that plausible?
Not sure it is politically plausible but I would hope that Sturgeon would have the gumption to do it. Personally I think she would. Not to say they would not go back to them again if the fulfilled the criteria but I would also like to see them distributed on a more equitable basis and not just auctioned off to the highest bidder. Again I would more faith in Scotland achieving that than England at present.
That's an interesting assessment. Not least because London might try to seize control of the process, which would be another barrel of lugworms entirely.
I am sure they might. In this case it would be more interesting and certainly more controversial than the power grabs already underway on returning powers since the awarding of quotas is already devolved to the individual Parliaments so there could be no pretence of anything other than taking powers away from Holyrood.
First, thanks to @Philip_Thompson and others for their kind words concerning my brother's health.
I spoke to him today - he is doing well - but there must be others like him who are trapped by the virus. They have it, they are carriers but cannot currently get rid of it. We also know from @Foxy and others that for some recovery from coronavirus isn't complete and there are significant long-term medical and physical impacts even if one survives the initial virus.
There seems an assumption you get the virus and you get better but that's simplistic and naive. For some, it's not "better" and it's not back to where they were. I can't understand why people continue to treat this virus with such contempt - it's a horrible thing which for thousands has been fatal and with which many thousands of others will have to live for years to come.
If we haven't yet been touched by the virus, sometimes the statistics appear only as numbers and not the personal heartache those who find themselves closer to the disease have to endure.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
There were not enough masks to go around in March, how does mask wearing make things worse? Whilst not wishing it on the UK I fully expect them to follow the outbreak profile becoming apparent in Spain and France given they have done nothing to avoid it.
As an aside, while my employer is making no plans to return to our office premises, Mrs Stodge is not so fortunate.
She is stressed because her Manager and others are putting enormous psychological pressure on staff to return to the office even though they can only operate at 25% capacity. Essentially, they want her to go in one day per week from next month.
She has health issues which put her in the "moderate risk" category (and that includes me as well) but her employer has said she needs to produce a medical certificate explaining why she cannot travel into the office or she will have to take a day's unpaid leave.
It's so disappointing that organisations, unable to accept the world has changed, are resorting to "bully boy" tactics to force people back to desk-based office work. I don't believe Mrs Stodge's health (or indeed anyone's) should be compromised by those who think saving Pret a Manger and transport operators is worth risking people's lives.
It would be welcome to have a Government who saw the opportunities of the revolution in home working and encouraged and supported it rather than trying to drag everyone back to a version of "normality" that now seems like ancient history.
On fishing it's not an area I especially care about but to think that the fish are our natural resource so we should determine what we do with it. I have 3 questions or thoughts from what I've read here and elsewhere.
1. People speak about rights and quotas having been bought and sold as if it is inalienable and unchangeable. But surely they only exist within the framework of the CFP. If we completely leave the CFP and control our own waters we can determine whatever policies we want going forwards surely?
2. I believe we get a greatly reduced share of the fish in the CFP than we should as it was determined by proportion of fish being taken in community waters in the early 70s not the proportion of waters or fish that should be each nations own resource. Since UK fishermen were at the time fishing in Iceland's waters (until Iceland expelled them) we got a lower than appropriate share which I believe continues to this day.
3. If we were to want to we could claim and legally enforce 200 miles of exclusive waters for ourselves. As Norway and Iceland do. Why shouldn't we?
I don't particularly care about the fish but it's our own natural resource under international maritime laws. Why shouldn't we get the most from our own natural resources? Everyone else seeks to.
Indeed but what about if you had bought a fishing licence in good faith from someone and were suddenly told it was worthless and you couldn't fish. Its a bit like buying farming land from someone in, say, France, and being told you couldn;t farm, isn;t it?
Its not that unusual in the EU though. Various rights which transferred for large sums of money such as Milk quota and the right to various subsidies re livestock have either disappeared or been materially changed in their operation as policies changed. Fishing quota is a man made artificial construct and it is up to us to determine how it is allocated once we are free of CFP commitments.
How fishing quotas are allocated is up to national governments under the CFP and different member states have very different policies.
That is true but as Robert has already pointed out those policies require to be compatible with EU law in respect of freedom of movement for people and businesses. You cannot discriminate in favour of your own population to the detriment of other EU citizens.
And yet there is practically no foreign ownership of French or Dutch fishing quotas.
I think I posted on here a while back the composition of EU countries fishing fleets by displacement / tonnage. The UK had the smallest boat size. Essentially, in most EU countries owner-operated small trawlers had been replaced by industrial fishing vessels, owned by corporations.
And because these vessels were more efficient, and because the companies didn't live hand to mouth, they could borrow to buy up British quotas.
Part of the problem we have is that we're not just trying to preserve British fish stocks for British fishermen, we're also trying to preserve a way of life.
And - really - the threats to that way of life, and the communities that depend on it, goes far beyond Brexit. To protect them, we need to not just have fishing quotas for British waters, but to also require that fish are landed in the UK, and that boats are limited to a maximum size.
Doing that, though, results in British fish being brought ashore at higher cost than those in Spain or France or wherever. And that then requires us to impose tariffs on fish imports, to allow the fishermen to fish economically.
We can do this - but doing this is part of a trade off in our negotiations with other countries over FTAs. How important is protecting a way of life that is economically marginal? And how does that compare to opportunities that might be lost in other parts of the economy?
None of which is actually pertinent to the point that was being discussed and which you raised originally about the UK Government being sued if they remove all quotas from foreign vessels. Something that is very much overstated.
My points are a bit more nuanced.
(1) If you strip quotas from one group of people, but leave them with others, then you open yourself up to legal challenge. If you completely abolished quotas then it's a very different situation. If you started from scratch, i.e. auctioning rights off each year, then you probably wouldn't have a problem. But it would be a disaster for fishing communities.
(2) Even if you made it so only British people and firms could own fishing quotas, you wouldn't necessarily change the amount of fish landed in the UK by Brits. Already a large chunk of British fish quotas are owned by Brits by effectively operated by others who never even dock at UK ports.
(3) We seem unclear as to our ultimate goal. Is it to protect British fishermen? Or is to have an efficient fishing industry? "Taking back control" - to a struggling fisherman - does not mean that rights become British but nothing changes.
1. If you start from scratch and copy the system in other countries where the quotas cannot be sold and revert to the Government if the owner relinquishes control then your supposed problems disappear.
2 easily solved by doing what the UK fishing industry has pressed for and say at least 60% of UK quota boats must be UK crewed and at least 60% of the catch must be landed in the UK.
3. The two are not mutually exclusive. I would certainly ban the large factory fishing vessels not just on the grounds of protecting UK fishermen but also (actually more so) for environmental reasons.
THose are criticval issues, so really good to see you variously discussing them.
And yet stripping holders of quotas does huge damage to the fishing barons. The great Brexit supporters. Is that plausible?
Not sure it is politically plausible but I would hope that Sturgeon would have the gumption to do it. Personally I think she would. Not to say they would not go back to them again if the fulfilled the criteria but I would also like to see them distributed on a more equitable basis and not just auctioned off to the highest bidder. Again I would more faith in Scotland achieving that than England at present.
That's an interesting assessment. Not least because London might try to seize control of the process, which would be another barrel of lugworms entirely.
I am sure they might. In this case it would be more interesting and certainly more controversial than the power grabs already underway on returning powers since the awarding of quotas is already devolved to the individual Parliaments so there could be no pretence of anything other than taking powers away from Holyrood.
Now that is an acute observation.
There are a number of things that sadden me about the way in which things have developed since Brexit. One of them is that we have Boris leading the country. For all that others hate him I would much rather have seen Gove in charge (or pretty much anyone else). The completely unnecessary Henry VIII powers is another. Ultimate powers should reside with Parliament not the Executive.
But one of the really scandalous one was May's decision, continued by Johnson, to use the return of powers from Brussels as an excuse to seize more control over the devolved nations. There are huge swathes of former EU laws that should be devolved straight to Holyrood for example. Of course there will be a lot which needs to be more carefully considered as it has national impact but anything that was in an area that was already a devolved power when we were inside the EU should go straight to the devolved legislatures afterwards.
On fishing it's not an area I especially care about but to think that the fish are our natural resource so we should determine what we do with it. I have 3 questions or thoughts from what I've read here and elsewhere.
1. People speak about rights and quotas having been bought and sold as if it is inalienable and unchangeable. But surely they only exist within the framework of the CFP. If we completely leave the CFP and control our own waters we can determine whatever policies we want going forwards surely?
2. I believe we get a greatly reduced share of the fish in the CFP than we should as it was determined by proportion of fish being taken in community waters in the early 70s not the proportion of waters or fish that should be each nations own resource. Since UK fishermen were at the time fishing in Iceland's waters (until Iceland expelled them) we got a lower than appropriate share which I believe continues to this day.
3. If we were to want to we could claim and legally enforce 200 miles of exclusive waters for ourselves. As Norway and Iceland do. Why shouldn't we?
I don't particularly care about the fish but it's our own natural resource under international maritime laws. Why shouldn't we get the most from our own natural resources? Everyone else seeks to.
Indeed but what about if you had bought a fishing licence in good faith from someone and were suddenly told it was worthless and you couldn't fish. Its a bit like buying farming land from someone in, say, France, and being told you couldn;t farm, isn;t it?
Its not that unusual in the EU though. Various rights which transferred for large sums of money such as Milk quota and the right to various subsidies re livestock have either disappeared or been materially changed in their operation as policies changed. Fishing quota is a man made artificial construct and it is up to us to determine how it is allocated once we are free of CFP commitments.
How fishing quotas are allocated is up to national governments under the CFP and different member states have very different policies.
That is true but as Robert has already pointed out those policies require to be compatible with EU law in respect of freedom of movement for people and businesses. You cannot discriminate in favour of your own population to the detriment of other EU citizens.
And yet there is practically no foreign ownership of French or Dutch fishing quotas.
I think I posted on here a while back the composition of EU countries fishing fleets by displacement / tonnage. The UK had the smallest boat size. Essentially, in most EU countries owner-operated small trawlers had been replaced by industrial fishing vessels, owned by corporations.
And because these vessels were more efficient, and because the companies didn't live hand to mouth, they could borrow to buy up British quotas.
Part of the problem we have is that we're not just trying to preserve British fish stocks for British fishermen, we're also trying to preserve a way of life.
And - really - the threats to that way of life, and the communities that depend on it, goes far beyond Brexit. To protect them, we need to not just have fishing quotas for British waters, but to also require that fish are landed in the UK, and that boats are limited to a maximum size.
Doing that, though, results in British fish being brought ashore at higher cost than those in Spain or France or wherever. And that then requires us to impose tariffs on fish imports, to allow the fishermen to fish economically.
We can do this - but doing this is part of a trade off in our negotiations with other countries over FTAs. How important is protecting a way of life that is economically marginal? And how does that compare to opportunities that might be lost in other parts of the economy?
None of which is actually pertinent to the point that was being discussed and which you raised originally about the UK Government being sued if they remove all quotas from foreign vessels. Something that is very much overstated.
My points are a bit more nuanced.
(1) If you strip quotas from one group of people, but leave them with others, then you open yourself up to legal challenge. If you completely abolished quotas then it's a very different situation. If you started from scratch, i.e. auctioning rights off each year, then you probably wouldn't have a problem. But it would be a disaster for fishing communities.
(2) Even if you made it so only British people and firms could own fishing quotas, you wouldn't necessarily change the amount of fish landed in the UK by Brits. Already a large chunk of British fish quotas are owned by Brits by effectively operated by others who never even dock at UK ports.
(3) We seem unclear as to our ultimate goal. Is it to protect British fishermen? Or is to have an efficient fishing industry? "Taking back control" - to a struggling fisherman - does not mean that rights become British but nothing changes.
1. If you start from scratch and copy the system in other countries where the quotas cannot be sold and revert to the Government if the owner relinquishes control then your supposed problems disappear.
2 easily solved by doing what the UK fishing industry has pressed for and say at least 60% of UK quota boats must be UK crewed and at least 60% of the catch must be landed in the UK.
3. The two are not mutually exclusive. I would certainly ban the large factory fishing vessels not just on the grounds of protecting UK fishermen but also (actually more so) for environmental reasons.
THose are criticval issues, so really good to see you variously discussing them.
And yet stripping holders of quotas does huge damage to the fishing barons. The great Brexit supporters. Is that plausible?
Not sure it is politically plausible but I would hope that Sturgeon would have the gumption to do it. Personally I think she would. Not to say they would not go back to them again if the fulfilled the criteria but I would also like to see them distributed on a more equitable basis and not just auctioned off to the highest bidder. Again I would more faith in Scotland achieving that than England at present.
That's an interesting assessment. Not least because London might try to seize control of the process, which would be another barrel of lugworms entirely.
I am sure they might. In this case it would be more interesting and certainly more controversial than the power grabs already underway on returning powers since the awarding of quotas is already devolved to the individual Parliaments so there could be no pretence of anything other than taking powers away from Holyrood.
Now that is an acute observation.
There are a number of things that sadden me about the way in which things have developed since Brexit. One of them is that we have Boris leading the country. For all that others hate him I would much rather have seen Gove in charge (or pretty much anyone else). The completely unnecessary Henry VIII powers is another. Ultimate powers should reside with Parliament not the Executive.
But one of the really scandalous one was May's decision, continued by Johnson, to use the return of powers from Brussels as an excuse to seize more control over the devolved nations. There are huge swathes of former EU laws that should be devolved straight to Holyrood for example. Of course there will be a lot which needs to be more carefully considered as it has national impact but anything that was in an area that was already a devolved power when we were inside the EU should go straight to the devolved legislatures afterwards.
There was along the way a good chance of much worse.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
There were not enough masks to go around in March, how does mask wearing make things worse? Whilst not wishing it on the UK I fully expect them to follow the outbreak profile becoming apparent in Spain and France given they have done nothing to avoid it.
Is mask wearing very prevalent in Spain ?
Close to 100% out in the street, 100% in shops, hospitals etc bars restaurants about to move to 100%. €100 fine if caught
I must confess I was beginning to wonder. As the Rasmussen crosstabs are behind a paywall (as are the Trafalgar ones), I simply don't know how their sampling is different from other pollsters but the current +2 lead for Biden sticks out like an outlier (as does the +15 lead from Quinnipiac).
The latter has now produced a +13 lead for Biden in Florida (51-38) while St Pete Polls has Biden ahead 50-44.
We also had the Hill/Harris X poll last evening - Biden leads 45-38 in that. The regional split has Biden up 45-39 in the North East which seems remarkably good for Trump and 45-38 in the Midwest which seems remarkably good for Biden. Biden up 50-32 in the West and 42-41 in the South.
Biden leads 47-37 among White voters (really?). Among men Biden leads 44-42 (really again?) and among women by 47-34.
Not at all convinced by this poll to be honest.
I wont believe the polls are not under sampling or just plain wrong until Biden is sat in the Oval Office with his feet on Resolute desk.
I must confess I was beginning to wonder. As the Rasmussen crosstabs are behind a paywall (as are the Trafalgar ones), I simply don't know how their sampling is different from other pollsters but the current +2 lead for Biden sticks out like an outlier (as does the +15 lead from Quinnipiac).
The latter has now produced a +13 lead for Biden in Florida (51-38) while St Pete Polls has Biden ahead 50-44.
We also had the Hill/Harris X poll last evening - Biden leads 45-38 in that. The regional split has Biden up 45-39 in the North East which seems remarkably good for Trump and 45-38 in the Midwest which seems remarkably good for Biden. Biden up 50-32 in the West and 42-41 in the South.
Biden leads 47-37 among White voters (really?). Among men Biden leads 44-42 (really again?) and among women by 47-34.
Not at all convinced by this poll to be honest.
Should be pointed out in 2016 Rasmussen were the only pollster to correctly have a Hillary popular vote lead of 2% and Trafalgar group were the only pollster to have Trump ahead in Pennsylvania and Michigan
If we haven't yet been touched by the virus, sometimes the statistics appear only as numbers and not the personal heartache those who find themselves closer to the disease have to endure.
Thank you for the thoughtful word, my friend.
I can only sympathise with those who have lost family members as a result of this and seeing lines on a graph seems to further trivialise this.
I thought Spain, in having a national service of remembrance for the dead, struck the right chord. I'd like to think instead of bellicose rantings about "normality", we will take a moment to remember those who are no longer with us.
My brother is 100 miles away - it wouldn't matter if he were 100 yards away in truth. He lives in a small village and went to the local cafe in mid March and thinks he contracted the virus then. He first tested positive on March 31st and has now tested positive on three occasions and never tested negative.
I suspect the chemotherapy he underwent to treat cancer last year weakened his immune system which left him vulnerable to infection and unable to shift the virus once he got it.
I hope he will get over this and if there is a vaccine he will be a priority to receive it.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
There were not enough masks to go around in March, how does mask wearing make things worse? Whilst not wishing it on the UK I fully expect them to follow the outbreak profile becoming apparent in Spain and France given they have done nothing to avoid it.
Is mask wearing very prevalent in Spain ?
Close to 100% out in the street, 100% in shops, hospitals etc bars restaurants about to move to 100%. €100 fine if caught
It would be more interesting to understand the extent to which mask wearing is embraced as a worthwhile civic obligation, as opposed to being something that needs to be done to avoid the very real risk of having one's wallet emptied by a large and very zealous police force. I reckon that the thing most likely to frustrate masks everywhere in this country, which is probably where the Government would eventually like to go, is the lack of effective enforcement.
It will take another three or four months for it to become apparent that the only choice we ever faced was to go back to normal and accept the risks, or face a complete meltdown.
For my brother, there is no "choice" as you call it. He is trapped by and with the virus and there are many like him.
It's not all about "economic meltdown" as you put it.
The Southern states of the USA, Brazil and now India are busy demonstrating what attempting going back to Normal means.
It demonstrates that people do not function economically normally in an unrestrained pandemic.
Eliminating the disease via immunisation or Track and Trace is the way back to economic and social normality. Its a bit shit, but that is the nature of disease, we cannot ignore it away.
If we haven't yet been touched by the virus, sometimes the statistics appear only as numbers and not the personal heartache those who find themselves closer to the disease have to endure.
Thank you for the thoughtful word, my friend.
I can only sympathise with those who have lost family members as a result of this and seeing lines on a graph seems to further trivialise this.
I thought Spain, in having a national service of remembrance for the dead, struck the right chord. I'd like to think instead of bellicose rantings about "normality", we will take a moment to remember those who are no longer with us.
My brother is 100 miles away - it wouldn't matter if he were 100 yards away in truth. He lives in a small village and went to the local cafe in mid March and thinks he contracted the virus then. He first tested positive on March 31st and has now tested positive on three occasions and never tested negative.
I suspect the chemotherapy he underwent to treat cancer last year weakened his immune system which left him vulnerable to infection and unable to shift the virus once he got it.
I hope he will get over this and if there is a vaccine he will be a priority to receive it.
The media and politicians focusing on numbers to demonstrate how well or badly a government is doing against the virus is quite distateful, although inevitable I guess. Best wishes.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
There were not enough masks to go around in March, how does mask wearing make things worse? Whilst not wishing it on the UK I fully expect them to follow the outbreak profile becoming apparent in Spain and France given they have done nothing to avoid it.
Is mask wearing very prevalent in Spain ?
Close to 100% out in the street, 100% in shops, hospitals etc bars restaurants about to move to 100%. €100 fine if caught
It would be more interesting to understand the extent to which mask wearing is embraced as a worthwhile civic obligation, as opposed to being something that needs to be done to avoid the very real risk of having one's wallet emptied by a large and very zealous police force. I reckon that the thing most likely to frustrate masks everywhere in this country, which is probably where the Government would eventually like to go, is the lack of effective enforcement.
Most of Those over 50 adopted masks immediately when the new rules came out for masks Iin the street. The younger generation need coercion even though it is they who are catching and spreading the virus. We’re 7 days away from the Madrid invasion so street wearing will at least make people think before hugging and kissing each other. Enforcement is spain is a lot easier given four times the number of law enforcement personnel compared to the UK.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
You don't sound like you hope you are wrong.
Of course I hope I’m wrong as if cases go up the government will force mask wearing every time you go outside which is the case in Spain at the moment.
I thought a couple of PBers who actually live in Spain told you you earlier that the rise in infections in Spain were mainly coming from situations where masks were still not worn, eg clusters from nightclubs. I suspect they are more clued up on what is actually happening in Spain but it doesn't fit your agenda so you ignore it?
It will take another three or four months for it to become apparent that the only choice we ever faced was to go back to normal and accept the risks, or face a complete meltdown.
For my brother, there is no "choice" as you call it. He is trapped by and with the virus and there are many like him.
It's not all about "economic meltdown" as you put it.
You have eloquently shot down a ridiculously crass comment.
It is these people who assume they are not in the line of fire, and can carry on regardless, that will do untold harm to the rest of us.
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
You don't sound like you hope you are wrong.
Of course I hope I’m wrong as if cases go up the government will force mask wearing every time you go outside which is the case in Spain at the moment.
I thought a couple of PBers who actually live in Spain told you you earlier that the rise in infections in Spain were mainly coming from situations where masks were still not worn, ie clusters from nightclubs. Are you ignoring that because it doesn't fit your agenda?
I’ll find some breakdowns tomorrow of where these outbreaks are coming from but off the top of my head
Night bars frequented by young people Family gatherings at home or in restaurants
The first infections in this wave came from meat processing plants.
Interesting that Priti Patel would beat everyone except Gove, Raab and Sunak.
Indeed, in my view Sunak is the likely next leader if Boris goes before the next general election or after the Tories win the next general election, Patel however is likely next leader if the Tories lose the next general election and Boris goes after the defeat (if the Tories lose Raab will likely have lost his seat anyway)
I hope I am wrong but I think the enforced mask wearing will make the Covid situation worse in the UK and that in 2 weeks new cases will be over 1000 per day. If face coverings were the solution then the WHO would have recommended them back in March but they didn’t. Countries where face coverings are far more prevalent than the UK are seeing rises in cases now and I fear we will be the same. Social distancing and hand washing have worked in the UK , Deaths are below average and the number of new cases is under control. There is no need for this change and I fear it will have the opposite of the desired effect.
How on earth is more people covering their faces going to make matters worse?
Cases will rise, there will be further lockdowns but it won't be the fault of mask wearers it will more likely be the fault of those Brits who are too bloody minded/selfish/ ignorant/idle to bother taking the minimal precautions.
Comments
https://www.realclearpolitics.com
But overall I think they have passed the peak of this wave. I am not clued up on what counter measure Texas has taken over the last few weeks.
Colin Platt’s King Death is worth a read too.
Biden doesn't need to get +3% in those states to win, he just needs to move from -1.2% to -0.5%.
If someone is attached to their town /football team /hobby/religion/whatever, are they all forms of "nationalism"?
There’s quite an extensive bibliography here, not including the article itself which is tangential to your point.
https://academic.oup.com/ereh/article/17/4/408/499216
Alfani’s Calamities and the Economy in Renaissance Italy: The Grand Tour of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse looks potentially the most interesting one to start with.
https://twitter.com/business/status/1286367738689093637?s=20
The most insidious, of course, are extreme Cornish (or visa versa) nationalists bent on their diabolical "Greater East Cornwall Co-Prosperity Sphere" extending from Shepard's Bush Roundabout to the Tamar.
Do NOT let the Pasty-Faced villains get away with their knavish tricks!
Twitter (TWTR) is actively exploring additional ways to make money from its users, including by considering a subscription model, CEO Jack Dorsey said Thursday. The move comes as Twitter suffers a sharp decline in its core advertising business.
"You will likely see some tests this year" of various approaches, Dorsey told analysts on an investor call held to discuss the company's second quarter earnings results. Dorsey said he has "a really high bar for when we would ask consumers to pay for aspects of Twitter," but confirmed that the company is seeking to diversify its sources of revenue in what are "very, very early phases of exploring."
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/23/tech/twitter-subscription-earnings/index.html
Screaming at the world for free is one thing, parting with money to do it is quite another.
Judge Orders Cohen Released, Citing ‘Retaliation’ Over Tell-All Book
A judge agreed that federal officials had returned Michael D. Cohen to prison because he wanted to publish a book this fall about President Trump.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered that Michael D. Cohen be released into home confinement after finding that federal officials had returned him to prison in retaliation for his plans to write a tell-all memoir about President Trump.
The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court, said Mr. Cohen was sent back to prison this month after several weeks of medical furlough because of his desire to publish a book before the election about his years as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer.
“I make the finding that the purpose of transferring Mr. Cohen from furlough and home confinement to jail is retaliatory,” the judge said. “And it’s retaliation because of his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book and to discuss anything about the book or anything else he wants on social media and with others.” . . .
. . . on July 9, prisons officials abruptly returned Mr. Cohen to prison after he balked at signing an agreement outlining the terms of his release. Those terms included a provision that would have prevented him from publishing a book, his suit said.
In court papers filed this week, prisons officials denied Mr. Cohen was sent back to prison because of his book; rather, they said, he had been “combative” and “defiant” when they met to discuss the agreement, and they considered such behavior to be “unacceptable.”
In his suit, Mr. Cohen claimed that he never hid the fact that he was writing a book about Mr. Trump. He noted that he spent his mornings working on the manuscript “in plain sight” in the prison’s law library, and said he also discussed the project openly with prison officials, staff members and even other inmates.
Surgeons wear face fitted masks.
RIP.
Nobody who has already switched to the independence side of the argument is in the least bit interested in what Labour has to say about anything.
As a gambling man he has probably died at the optimum moment. He saw the vote get won and the decision implemented, in principle if not in practice, but won’t be around to see the slow grinding damage that will be done by erecting barriers between ourselves and our closest neighbours, and our slow but steady loss of influence and credibility on the world stage.
https://www.berwickshirenews.co.uk/news/d-r-collin-facing-reality-brexit-114194
Interesting pre-print (naturally to be used with caution) from two weeks ago:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109231v4
'In countries with cultural norms or government policies supporting public mask-wearing, per-capita coronavirus mortality increased on average by just 7.2% each week, as compared with 55.0% each week in remaining countries.'
2 easily solved by doing what the UK fishing industry has pressed for and say at least 60% of UK quota boats must be UK crewed and at least 60% of the catch must be landed in the UK.
3. The two are not mutually exclusive. I would certainly ban the large factory fishing vessels not just on the grounds of protecting UK fishermen but also (actually more so) for environmental reasons.
As we know the CFP process in 197x was a bit of a last-minute mugging.
NEF did an interesting survey on this a few years ago - and there are a number of different ways in which this is run depending on the country.
https://neweconomics.org/uploads/images/2017/04/1513-NEF-English-Executive-Summary-Report.pdf
As I see it, there is no reason for example why these can't be a publicly owned resource rented for a period at a time. Or any other lawful arrangement we wish to adopt.
And yet stripping holders of quotas does huge damage to the fishing barons. The great Brexit supporters. Is that plausible?
https://twitter.com/alanferrier/status/1286381171362934787?s=20
The HK residency thing also making them spitting mad - apparently the pro-CCP types on social media* are demanding that anyone with a British HK passport give it up or be declared a traitor.
The other thing that would hurt is putting officials on the sanctioned list.
A member of the family works in very high end retail - her stories of wives on phones to their husbands, when they realise the bank accounts/cards are blocked by the UK processing systems....
*The CCP spends a fortune on their troll armies.
Regardless of the established very low risk of contracting the disease in the open air, and the fact that its prevalence is also very low in most of the country, the *theoretical* difference that masking *might* make can be used to justify imposing it in virtually all situations.
Give it a couple of months and it'll be illegal to walk alone across an empty field without a rag on your face. In practice, however, mask wearing in such situations is effectively unenforceable and is liable to be disregarded by a large fraction of the population. If enough people are sufficiently sceptical of it then it might even fail to catch on properly in shops, unless the staff have been instructed to apply the rule strictly - and businesses have already been told that they aren't responsible for doing so.
As regards greatness. A country that creates a prosperous and peaceful society, free from ugly inequalities of class or race or gender, that plays its full part in seeking to solve global problems, and that seeks only win/win relationships with other countries - this is the only form of National Greatness that I have any interest in.
And it's challenging enough for anybody. The rest of the "greatness" bullshit is typically a ruse to prevent people noticing that it isn't happening.
First, thanks to @Philip_Thompson and others for their kind words concerning my brother's health.
I spoke to him today - he is doing well - but there must be others like him who are trapped by the virus. They have it, they are carriers but cannot currently get rid of it. We also know from @Foxy and others that for some recovery from coronavirus isn't complete and there are significant long-term medical and physical impacts even if one survives the initial virus.
There seems an assumption you get the virus and you get better but that's simplistic and naive. For some, it's not "better" and it's not back to where they were. I can't understand why people continue to treat this virus with such contempt - it's a horrible thing which for thousands has been fatal and with which many thousands of others will have to live for years to come.
It's not all about "economic meltdown" as you put it.
I know it well
The latter has now produced a +13 lead for Biden in Florida (51-38) while St Pete Polls has Biden ahead 50-44.
We also had the Hill/Harris X poll last evening - Biden leads 45-38 in that. The regional split has Biden up 45-39 in the North East which seems remarkably good for Trump and 45-38 in the Midwest which seems remarkably good for Biden. Biden up 50-32 in the West and 42-41 in the South.
Biden leads 47-37 among White voters (really?). Among men Biden leads 44-42 (really again?) and among women by 47-34.
Not at all convinced by this poll to be honest.
The grim old thing that is our PM eh!?
Still gets my vote though.
My youngest son's friend really has had a shit couple of years
A year ago today his mum died
Today his younger brother committed suicide
This year that lad will be turning 18
Grim, just so grim.
https://twitter.com/mattwardman/status/1286387068336316418
She is stressed because her Manager and others are putting enormous psychological pressure on staff to return to the office even though they can only operate at 25% capacity. Essentially, they want her to go in one day per week from next month.
She has health issues which put her in the "moderate risk" category (and that includes me as well) but her employer has said she needs to produce a medical certificate explaining why she cannot travel into the office or she will have to take a day's unpaid leave.
It's so disappointing that organisations, unable to accept the world has changed, are resorting to "bully boy" tactics to force people back to desk-based office work. I don't believe Mrs Stodge's health (or indeed anyone's) should be compromised by those who think saving Pret a Manger and transport operators is worth risking people's lives.
It would be welcome to have a Government who saw the opportunities of the revolution in home working and encouraged and supported it rather than trying to drag everyone back to a version of "normality" that now seems like ancient history.
But one of the really scandalous one was May's decision, continued by Johnson, to use the return of powers from Brussels as an excuse to seize more control over the devolved nations. There are huge swathes of former EU laws that should be devolved straight to Holyrood for example. Of course there will be a lot which needs to be more carefully considered as it has national impact but anything that was in an area that was already a devolved power when we were inside the EU should go straight to the devolved legislatures afterwards.
If Mr Johnson demonstrated competence, the fact that it looks like he may have had a little accident in the trouser department, wouldn't bother me.
It was merely an observation.
I can only sympathise with those who have lost family members as a result of this and seeing lines on a graph seems to further trivialise this.
I thought Spain, in having a national service of remembrance for the dead, struck the right chord. I'd like to think instead of bellicose rantings about "normality", we will take a moment to remember those who are no longer with us.
My brother is 100 miles away - it wouldn't matter if he were 100 yards away in truth. He lives in a small village and went to the local cafe in mid March and thinks he contracted the virus then. He first tested positive on March 31st and has now tested positive on three occasions and never tested negative.
I suspect the chemotherapy he underwent to treat cancer last year weakened his immune system which left him vulnerable to infection and unable to shift the virus once he got it.
I hope he will get over this and if there is a vaccine he will be a priority to receive it.
It demonstrates that people do not function economically normally in an unrestrained pandemic.
Eliminating the disease via immunisation or Track and Trace is the way back to economic and social normality. Its a bit shit, but that is the nature of disease, we cannot ignore it away.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1286231529761513472?s=20
It is these people who assume they are not in the line of fire, and can carry on regardless, that will do untold harm to the rest of us.
Night bars frequented by young people
Family gatherings at home or in restaurants
The first infections in this wave came from meat processing plants.
Cases will rise, there will be further lockdowns but it won't be the fault of mask wearers it will more likely be the fault of those Brits who are too bloody minded/selfish/ ignorant/idle to bother taking the minimal precautions.