Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
Quite what? Without Bercow, there was a general election so that point is moot. Until then, it was possible (if unlikely) to construct a Labour government to revoke Article 50 and call an election.
No it wasn't. Do the maths and show how you get a majority behind a Labour government.
It depends how busy were dentists on the day of the vote.
There wouldn't be one day of a vote, for there to be a functioning government there are votes practically every day. You can't rely on the dentist for all of them.
The numbers weren't there in the last Parliament for what you propose.
The offer from Labour was purdah terms.
Purdah can exist during an election campaign. Purdah can't exist for the approximately ten months it would take to pass second referendum legislation, hold a referendum campaign, hold the referendum, then have a General election.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
And people are risking their lives to cross the channel on rubber dinghies to leave all that?
Are they mad?
As they get paid more in the UK and are less likely to be jobless, they would still holiday in France
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
Yes, that's right. They're a republic, dammit. Is it the Fifth one? I forget.
In any negotiation there is a strong party and a weak party. The UK is the weak party, this is obvious.
This is the problem, you actually think the UK is weak.
I know you are an uber-loyalist but perhaps you can elucidate on that
He said the UK is the weak party . . . it is not. We have a higher GDP per capita than they do, a higher median income than they do and they have a trading surplus with us they're keen to protect. On any objective measure we are as strong or stronger per capita than they are.
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
That’s the problem you actually believe that rubbish.
Its not rubbish. How would you like to measure it?
GDP per capita? Median household income? Median wages?
On any reasonable metric the UK is better than the EU.
This is all so much bollocks.
The UK is not "better" than the EU, and the EU is not "better" than the UK. The UK is simply too different to exist successfully within the EU.
The UK and the EU won't come to trade terms because they are culturally misaligned, and if there is one thing you think everyone would've come to understand by now it's that culture usually trumps economics in the here and now. The EU thinks it's the sole legitimate voice of the European people and wants the UK locked into its orbit; the UK thinks that the EU is a meddlesome, overbearing pain in the arse and wants free of it. The position of each is anathema to the other and neither is willing to budge just to make it a bit easier and more convenient for freight to criss-cross the Channel.
The net result of this is not that the EU will offer concessions because it has a trade deficit with the UK and wants a few more fish, or that the UK will cave because the EU is bigger than it is. It's that the two will at best set about ignoring each other, or at worst come to hate each other, and in any event will just grow further and further and further apart.
The Sun's reporting of the EU basically saying "sod off" is very entertaining
Barnier's team doesn't have a mandate to say anything except sod off. The real negotiations begin in the 'tunnel' phase (or whatever it's called) and involve the Heads of Government of the 27.
Perhaps if the UK stopped undermining the deal it signed, some progress might be made. Let's be honest they wanted no trade deal and they're going to blame the EU for it.
Given Barnier's disgraceful attitude no trade deal is the best thing that can happen right now it seems, unless they change tact.
After we've gone through no deal and diverged from them then maybe they will come to their senses and start talking properly. If so then a deal can be agreed later, but we will have already diverged more from them by then.
Barnier is trying to undermine the deal the EU signed, is he? No.
The EU doesn't care about No Deal, how many times is this going to need to be said. It's blatantly clear to anyone not blinkered the EU just need to sit and wait and we'll come back to them.
Yes he is on the LPF he is explicitly undermining it.
I don't think we will come back to them but so be it we will see. I'm quite content for No Deal too - its people like you that seem most flustered about it.
I think it's less complex than that. Barnier is just going for EU-max. He's been given a wishlist, and he has not really diverted from it in the entire course of the negotiations. Because he can't. Barnier is a civil servant - he couldn't produce some flourish of a great deal even if he wanted to because he doesn't have the power to make decisions that affect Spanish and French fishermen etc. Frustratingly for all concerned, this phase is just neither side giving much until the real negotiations start. What we can say is thank God our negotiators aren't giving any concessions at this stage - that would be the height of foolishness. Basically thank God we've not got May and her 'negotiating team'.
All of which also means it would be completely pointless having a longer negotiating period and just an excuse for time wasting. Liam Fox’s comment about the “easiest trade deal ever” was correct, the technical side of the conversation is easy if there is political will because they start from a position of total alignment. It’s the politics that’s hard and a longer time period doesn’t help that.
Is everyone going to get this excited about whether the Uk signs a trade deal with the US, Canada or India? Bizarre what people get fixated on, the established global trade order has had nitroglycerin detonated under it in the last few years. And it’s got the sqrt of zero to do with UK-EU relations.
In any negotiation there is a strong party and a weak party. The UK is the weak party, this is obvious.
This is the problem, you actually think the UK is weak.
I know you are an uber-loyalist but perhaps you can elucidate on that
He said the UK is the weak party . . . it is not. We have a higher GDP per capita than they do, a higher median income than they do and they have a trading surplus with us. On any objective measure we are as strong or stronger per capita than they are.
It's not a per capita issue. Mo Farah may be stronger and fitter, on per-cell basis, than Mike Tyson. Who you gonna back in a fight?
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
That’s the problem you actually believe that rubbish.
Its not rubbish. How would you like to measure it?
GDP per capita? Median household income? dMedian wages?
On any reasonable metric the UK is better than the EU.
This is all so much bollocks.
The UK is not "better" than the EU, and the EU is not "better" than the UK. The UK is simply too different to exist successfully within the EU.
The UK and the EU won't come to trade terms because they are culturally misaligned, and if there is one thing you think everyone would've come to understand by now it's that culture usually trumps economics in the here and now. The EU thinks it's the sole legitimate voice of the European people and wants the UK locked into its orbit; the UK thinks that the EU is a meddlesome, overbearing pain in the arse and wants free of it. The position of each is anathema to the other and neither is willing to budge just to make it a bit easier and more convenient for freight to criss-cross the Channel.
The net result of this is not that the EU will offer concessions because it has a trade deficit with the UK and wants a few more fish, or that the UK will cave because the EU is bigger than it is. It's that the two will at best set about ignoring each other, or at worst come to hate each other, and in any event will just grow further and further and further apart.
Well said . . . and that is why I said "as equals" originally but @nichomar wrote "equal my arse" so that's why I said "You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite."
If he hadn't objected to the term equals, I wouldn't have needed to say why we're stronger than they are.
The problem Europhiles have is they they think more people equals better rather than being better off is better.
The UK may lose out from a no deal more economically in the short term than the EU (though I'm not sure that's the case). Its certainly debatable because we are in an unprecedented situation.
The point is that the voters don;t mind. They know that brexit is their decision, their mandate. They know that because they repeated the order multiple times.
The political ramifications of a no deal are far, far milder than the ramifications of a bad deal. And so the UK can stick to its position comfortably.
Is that the case in Brussels? who knows. Who knows what the 27 will really make of a no deal. They are being told we will buckle. We won;t. Boris can't.
In any negotiation there is a strong party and a weak party. The UK is the weak party, this is obvious.
This is the problem, you actually think the UK is weak.
I know you are an uber-loyalist but perhaps you can elucidate on that
He said the UK is the weak party . . . it is not. We have a higher GDP per capita than they do, a higher median income than they do and they have a trading surplus with us they're keen to protect. On any objective measure we are as strong or stronger per capita than they are.
Per capita? Presumably you think Monaco has the whip hand in negotiations with the EU too?
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
We can be splendid. But equality is about the maths.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
5 times the GDP, 7 times the population?
That maths clearly shows why we are stronger and better off than they are. Why is it not 7 times the GDP, 7 times the population? Or even 8 times the GDP, 7 times the population?
More population each of whom is poorer than you are, is not better.
A reciprocal deal is not necessarily worth a lot more to us than it is to them, especially when they're the ones with the trade surplus to lose.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
In any negotiation there is a strong party and a weak party. The UK is the weak party, this is obvious.
This is the problem, you actually think the UK is weak.
I know you are an uber-loyalist but perhaps you can elucidate on that
He said the UK is the weak party . . . it is not. We have a higher GDP per capita than they do, a higher median income than they do and they have a trading surplus with us they're keen to protect. On any objective measure we are as strong or stronger per capita than they are.
Per capita? Presumably you think Monaco has the whip hand in negotiations with the EU too?
Monaco GDP per capita $185,741 EU GDP per capita $43,188 (and I believe that is inflated by including us, the true picture is less than that)
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
We can be splendid. But equality is about the maths.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
That's not true because the people doing the negotiating are not the treasury, they are politicians. They are looking at the political ramifications.
The impact of a cave in deal is simply horrible for the conservatives. Horrible. They get this wrong they unleash the BP, this time for good. The tories won't get another chance from Brexiteer voters.
That's far, far worse than some short term economic disruption they can blame on COVID.
Interesting everyone always points to Notherners in this kind of post. Not sure its relevant anymore now that much of the BBC output is from Manchester. What you really dont here on national tv nowadays (or ever really) is west country accents, unless as a dim stereotype in a drama.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
In any negotiation there is a strong party and a weak party. The UK is the weak party, this is obvious.
This is the problem, you actually think the UK is weak.
I know you are an uber-loyalist but perhaps you can elucidate on that
He said the UK is the weak party . . . it is not. We have a higher GDP per capita than they do, a higher median income than they do and they have a trading surplus with us. On any objective measure we are as strong or stronger per capita than they are.
It's not a per capita issue. Mo Farah may be stronger and fitter, on per-cell basis, than Mike Tyson. Who you gonna back in a fight?
Of course it is a per capita issue. Everything in economics should be meaningfully considered per capita, it is the only metric that really matters.
Luxembourg has a GDP of $70.89 bn, $116,639 per capita Nigeria has a GDP of $397.3 bn, $2,028 per capita
Interesting everyone always points to Notherners in this kind of post. Not sure its relevant anymore now that much of the BBC output is from Manchester. What you really dont here on national tv nowadays (or ever really) is west country accents, unless as a dim stereotype in a drama.
When Michael Crick turns on the BBC, you know they have a problem
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
They earn more than a President and their family would and cost about the same as maintaining and protecting the Macrons if not slightly cheaper and certainly cheaper than protecting the POTUS
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
You can’t say that for sure.
You see if you can get him to prove it without using data for tourism in Outer Mongolia in the 1960s, or confined to visiting Madame Tussdaud's. He's still not accepted that tthere are rather more Scottish fishermen than the skippers of the largest class of boats.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
They earn more than a President and their family would and cost about the same as maintaining and maintaining the Macrons and Trumps if not slightly cheaper
But the damage to the moral fibre of the nation is enormous. You can't hold them up to the Cub Scouts as an example any more.
In any negotiation there is a strong party and a weak party. The UK is the weak party, this is obvious.
This is the problem, you actually think the UK is weak.
I know you are an uber-loyalist but perhaps you can elucidate on that
He said the UK is the weak party . . . it is not. We have a higher GDP per capita than they do, a higher median income than they do and they have a trading surplus with us. On any objective measure we are as strong or stronger per capita than they are.
It's not a per capita issue. Mo Farah may be stronger and fitter, on per-cell basis, than Mike Tyson. Who you gonna back in a fight?
Of course it is a per capita issue. Everything in economics should be meaningfully considered per capita, it is the only metric that really matters.
Luxembourg has a GDP of $70.89 bn, $116,639 per capita Nigeria has a GDP of $397.3 bn, $2,028 per capita
Would you rather be Nigeria or Luxembourg there?
I would rather be the Nigerian trade negotiator but I would rather live in Luxembourg
Quite what? Without Bercow, there was a general election so that point is moot. Until then, it was possible (if unlikely) to construct a Labour government to revoke Article 50 and call an election.
No it wasn't. Do the maths and show how you get a majority behind a Labour government.
It depends how busy were dentists on the day of the vote.
There wouldn't be one day of a vote, for there to be a functioning government there are votes practically every day. You can't rely on the dentist for all of them.
The numbers weren't there in the last Parliament for what you propose.
The offer from Labour was purdah terms.
Purdah can exist during an election campaign. Purdah can't exist for the approximately ten months it would take to pass second referendum legislation, hold a referendum campaign, hold the referendum, then have a General election.
Labour offered to revoke Article 50 and call an election, with purdah terms apart from the revocation. A second referendum was not part of this, and nor was governing for months.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
They earn more than a President and their family would and cost about the same as maintaining and maintaining the Macrons and Trumps if not slightly cheaper
But the damage to the moral fibre of the nation is enormous. You can't hold them up to the Cub Scouts as an example any more.
The Queen you can, compared to many of her ancestors and family she is a model of moral probity
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
We can be splendid. But equality is about the maths.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
5 times the GDP, 7 times the population?
That maths clearly shows why we are stronger and better off than they are. Why is it not 7 times the GDP, 7 times the population? Or even 8 times the GDP, 7 times the population?
More population each of whom is poorer than you are, is not better.
A reciprocal deal is not necessarily worth a lot more to us than it is to them, especially when they're the ones with the trade surplus to lose.
OK, if you want to do "per head" numbers...
UK exports per head to the EU are way bigger than EU exports per head to the UK.
You can't just flit between per head and block totals to shore up a case.
I could respect a "we don't care what the EU thinks", but the whining that the EU aren't treating us as equals that some Brexit supporters go in for is fairly pathetic. Especially when the early days of Brexit were all about how we held all the cards and could bend the EU to our will.
In any negotiation there is a strong party and a weak party. The UK is the weak party, this is obvious.
This is the problem, you actually think the UK is weak.
I know you are an uber-loyalist but perhaps you can elucidate on that
He said the UK is the weak party . . . it is not. We have a higher GDP per capita than they do, a higher median income than they do and they have a trading surplus with us. On any objective measure we are as strong or stronger per capita than they are.
It's not a per capita issue. Mo Farah may be stronger and fitter, on per-cell basis, than Mike Tyson. Who you gonna back in a fight?
Of course it is a per capita issue. Everything in economics should be meaningfully considered per capita, it is the only metric that really matters.
Luxembourg has a GDP of $70.89 bn, $116,639 per capita Nigeria has a GDP of $397.3 bn, $2,028 per capita
Would you rather be Nigeria or Luxembourg there?
We are talking about relative strength, and perhaps you would have been triggered a bit less if CHB had written "In any negotiation there is a stronger party and a weaker party."
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
No but it does limit visitors for the likes of royal weddings which earn billions
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
They earn more than a President and their family would and cost about the same as maintaining and protecting the Macrons if not slightly cheaper and certainly cheaper than protecting the POTUS
No we just have an Irish style head of state who has a four bed detached, greets visitors and opens supermarkets, gives out the odd gong not really expensive.
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
That’s the problem you actually believe that rubbish.
Its not rubbish. How would you like to measure it?
GDP per capita? Median household income? Median wages?
On any reasonable metric the UK is better than the EU.
This is all so much bollocks.
The UK is not "better" than the EU, and the EU is not "better" than the UK. The UK is simply too different to exist successfully within the EU.
The UK and the EU won't come to trade terms because they are culturally misaligned, and if there is one thing you think everyone would've come to understand by now it's that culture usually trumps economics in the here and now. The EU thinks it's the sole legitimate voice of the European people and wants the UK locked into its orbit; the UK thinks that the EU is a meddlesome, overbearing pain in the arse and wants free of it. The position of each is anathema to the other and neither is willing to budge just to make it a bit easier and more convenient for freight to criss-cross the Channel.
The net result of this is not that the EU will offer concessions because it has a trade deficit with the UK and wants a few more fish, or that the UK will cave because the EU is bigger than it is. It's that the two will at best set about ignoring each other, or at worst come to hate each other, and in any event will just grow further and further and further apart.
I think that's correct, but I think indifference is more likely than hostility. What we want, and what most European politicians want, are just not compatible. People have talked about the EU's coronavirus fund as being their "Hamilton moment." Their dream, our nightmare.
What it comes down to in the end, is that like the Russians, we view WWII very differently to most European politicians. For us a brutal test which we and the Russians passed. For the rest, the point where their systems of governance failed.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
That makes no sense at all.
You do realise don't you that Versailles is not in Paris? So Versailles is regularly getting tourists precisely because France doesn't have a monarch clogging up the Palace and blocking it from access to tourists? But they don't appear in Paris's tourism figures precisely because its not in Paris. That undermines your argument and goes to why the whole of France gets more tourism than we do.
If we had no monarchy we could open up Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace to tourism every day of the year just like Versailles gets.
Which do you think gets more annual visits by tourists - Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? Its not even close.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
They earn more than a President and their family would and cost about the same as maintaining and protecting the Macrons if not slightly cheaper and certainly cheaper than protecting the POTUS
No we just have an Irish style head of state who has a four bed detached, greets visitors and opens supermarkets, gives out the odd gong not really expensive.
We cannot have an Irish style head of state, we are a permanent UN Security Council member and a G7 and G20 member unlike Ireland, we would at least have to have a President the equivalent of Macron in pomp, security detail and residences and powers to reflect our status.
I have nothing against the president of Ireland but barely anyone has heard of him outside Ireland and he raises no revenue
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
We can be splendid. But equality is about the maths.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
That's not true because the people doing the negotiating are not the treasury, they are politicians. They are looking at the political ramifications.
The impact of a cave in deal is simply horrible for the conservatives. Horrible. They get this wrong they unleash the BP, this time for good. The tories won't get another chance from Brexiteer voters.
That's far, far worse than some short term economic disruption they can blame on COVID.
I was trying to look at things from the Euro side, and consider why they can't give the UK whatever it wants.
Fine. Then prepare for No Deal. But don't spend half your time insulting Eurocrats (Nazi punishments, remember those?) and half your time whining about not being taken at your inflated self-estimation.
Get the prep for no deal in place; the forms, the penpushers, the lorry parks. Because yes- the government has a choice between the pain of signing a deal and the pain of no deal.
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
We can be splendid. But equality is about the maths.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
I don't think you're fully appreciating the situation. The UK has a 72 billion dollar trade deficit (pa) with the EU. To take it to the extreme; if all trade between our blocs ceases, the UK is 72 bn a year richer, the EU 72 bn poorer.
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
We can be splendid. But equality is about the maths.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
5 times the GDP, 7 times the population?
That maths clearly shows why we are stronger and better off than they are. Why is it not 7 times the GDP, 7 times the population? Or even 8 times the GDP, 7 times the population?
More population each of whom is poorer than you are, is not better.
A reciprocal deal is not necessarily worth a lot more to us than it is to them, especially when they're the ones with the trade surplus to lose.
OK, if you want to do "per head" numbers...
UK exports per head to the EU are way bigger than EU exports per head to the UK.
You can't just flit between per head and block totals to shore up a case.
I could respect a "we don't care what the EU thinks", but the whining that the EU aren't treating us as equals that some Brexit supporters go in for is fairly pathetic. Especially when the early days of Brexit were all about how we held all the cards and could bend the EU to our will.
I'm not whining I'm saying we should walk away unless or until the EU treats us as equals. If that means we trade at No Deal for a few years and shrink our balance of payments deficit with them, then I am OK to live with that.
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
We can be splendid. But equality is about the maths.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
I don't think you're fully appreciating the situation. The UK has a 72 billion dollar trade deficit (pa) with the EU. To take it to the extreme; if all trade between our blocs ceases, the UK is 72 bn a year richer, the EU 72 bn poorer.
It doesn't work that way. 🤦🏻♂️
The EU has got a trade surplus to lose with us, but don't exaggerate.
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
We can be splendid. But equality is about the maths.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
5 times the GDP, 7 times the population?
That maths clearly shows why we are stronger and better off than they are. Why is it not 7 times the GDP, 7 times the population? Or even 8 times the GDP, 7 times the population?
More population each of whom is poorer than you are, is not better.
A reciprocal deal is not necessarily worth a lot more to us than it is to them, especially when they're the ones with the trade surplus to lose.
OK, if you want to do "per head" numbers...
UK exports per head to the EU are way bigger than EU exports per head to the UK.
You can't just flit between per head and block totals to shore up a case.
I could respect a "we don't care what the EU thinks", but the whining that the EU aren't treating us as equals that some Brexit supporters go in for is fairly pathetic. Especially when the early days of Brexit were all about how we held all the cards and could bend the EU to our will.
I'm not whining I'm saying we should walk away unless or until the EU treats us as equals. If that means we trade at No Deal for a few years and shrink our balance of payments deficit with them, then I am OK to live with that.
That’s fine but I’m sure there would be some unforeseen consequences to that.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
That makes no sense at all.
You do realise don't you that Versailles is not in Paris? So Versailles is regularly getting tourists precisely because France doesn't have a monarch clogging up the Palace and blocking it from access to tourists? But they don't appear in Paris's tourism figures precisely because its not in Paris. That undermines your argument and goes to why the whole of France gets more tourism than we do.
If we had no monarchy we could open up Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace to tourism every day of the year just like Versailles gets.
Which do you think gets more annual visits by tourists - Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? Its not even close.
Versailles is in the ile de France, the Paris region or Region Parisienne
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
We can be splendid. But equality is about the maths.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
I don't think you're fully appreciating the situation. The UK has a 72 billion dollar trade deficit (pa) with the EU. To take it to the extreme; if all trade between our blocs ceases, the UK is 72 bn a year richer, the EU 72 bn poorer.
It doesn't work that way. 🤦🏻♂️
The EU has got a trade surplus to lose with us, but don't exaggerate.
The example was deliberately extreme as I mentioned.
In any negotiation there is a strong party and a weak party. The UK is the weak party, this is obvious.
This is the problem, you actually think the UK is weak.
I know you are an uber-loyalist but perhaps you can elucidate on that
He said the UK is the weak party . . . it is not. We have a higher GDP per capita than they do, a higher median income than they do and they have a trading surplus with us. On any objective measure we are as strong or stronger per capita than they are.
It's not a per capita issue. Mo Farah may be stronger and fitter, on per-cell basis, than Mike Tyson. Who you gonna back in a fight?
Of course it is a per capita issue. Everything in economics should be meaningfully considered per capita, it is the only metric that really matters.
Luxembourg has a GDP of $70.89 bn, $116,639 per capita Nigeria has a GDP of $397.3 bn, $2,028 per capita
Would you rather be Nigeria or Luxembourg there?
We are talking about relative strength, and perhaps you would have been triggered a bit less if CHB had written "In any negotiation there is a stronger party and a weaker party."
The Monaco question nails it anyway.
Yes the Monaco question does nail it. Monaco are far stronger than the EU.
@Casino_Royale is at least a relatively balanced view, even if I disagree with him on mostly everything, normally. Others are just off the wall and completely down the rabbit hole.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
They earn more than a President and their family would and cost about the same as maintaining and protecting the Macrons if not slightly cheaper and certainly cheaper than protecting the POTUS
No we just have an Irish style head of state who has a four bed detached, greets visitors and opens supermarkets, gives out the odd gong not really expensive.
We cannot have an Irish style head of state, we are a permanent UN Security Council member and a G7 and G20 member unlike Ireland, we would at least have to have a President the equivalent of Macron in pomp, security detail and residences and powers to reflect our status.
I have nothing against the president of Ireland but barely anyone has heard of him outside Ireland and he raises no revenue
And cost very little, ideal. The tourist will come for the history. Who cares if people know who the head of state is, I bet most UK citizens couldn’t name more than five PM’s world wide let alone heads of state.
Yes it is easy to build on the back of Obama's economy
The debates, if they happen, will be must see TV.
But will they?
It'd be fun to hear a politician one day say "These elections are not very important, not like the ones we had last time, but vote anyway if you want".
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
That makes no sense at all.
You do realise don't you that Versailles is not in Paris? So Versailles is regularly getting tourists precisely because France doesn't have a monarch clogging up the Palace and blocking it from access to tourists? But they don't appear in Paris's tourism figures precisely because its not in Paris. That undermines your argument and goes to why the whole of France gets more tourism than we do.
If we had no monarchy we could open up Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace to tourism every day of the year just like Versailles gets.
Which do you think gets more annual visits by tourists - Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? Its not even close.
Versailles is in the ile de France, part of the Paris region
Its in Ile de France, it is not in Paris. It is an hour from Paris.
And I note you failed to answer the question. Which gets more annual tourists? Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? If our monarchy was a tourism pull then we would be getting more tourists so do we or does Versailles get more?
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
They earn more than a President and their family would and cost about the same as maintaining and protecting the Macrons if not slightly cheaper and certainly cheaper than protecting the POTUS
No we just have an Irish style head of state who has a four bed detached, greets visitors and opens supermarkets, gives out the odd gong not really expensive.
We cannot have an Irish style head of state, we are a permanent UN Security Council member and a G7 and G20 member unlike Ireland, we would at least have to have a President the equivalent of Macron in pomp, security detail and residences and powers to reflect our status.
I have nothing against the president of Ireland but barely anyone has heard of him outside Ireland and he raises no revenue
And cost very little, ideal. The tourist will come for the history. Who cares if people know who the head of state is, I bet most UK citizens could name more than five PM’s world wide let alone heads of state.
They will net less to the Treasury than the royals because they will not earn billions in revenue. We would have to have a President the equivalent of Macron at least to reflect our power and status, especially post Brexit.
Virtually everybody worldwide knows who the Queen is, virtually nobody outside Ireland knows who the Irish President is
In all seriousness, borrowing to fund FTTP seems like a completely sensible decision to me. I don't know who could not support it.
Why if we borrow money, should we not have ownership of the asset? Why does BT get to own it?
Because it would cost us more money to purchase Openreach. It would make Openreach less productive. It would generate fewer taxes.
There is no good reason to do that.
If we want to pay to incentivise FTTP then we would be paying for a service not an asset which can be done at a fraction of the cost - and Openreach can competitively tender for that at a fraction of the cost. Why would you spend far more money to do it a different way?
And that's before getting into whether universal FTTP is even a good idea, which it probably isn't given 5G and Satellite Internet developments.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
That makes no sense at all.
You do realise don't you that Versailles is not in Paris? So Versailles is regularly getting tourists precisely because France doesn't have a monarch clogging up the Palace and blocking it from access to tourists? But they don't appear in Paris's tourism figures precisely because its not in Paris. That undermines your argument and goes to why the whole of France gets more tourism than we do.
If we had no monarchy we could open up Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace to tourism every day of the year just like Versailles gets.
Which do you think gets more annual visits by tourists - Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? Its not even close.
Have you been to any of those places? I've only seen Windsor from the outside, but B Palace is like a 5 star hotel in East Berlin in 1985 only shabbier and not so funny. I don't think de-monarching it is going to enhance its appeal as much as you think it is.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
That makes no sense at all.
You do realise don't you that Versailles is not in Paris? So Versailles is regularly getting tourists precisely because France doesn't have a monarch clogging up the Palace and blocking it from access to tourists? But they don't appear in Paris's tourism figures precisely because its not in Paris. That undermines your argument and goes to why the whole of France gets more tourism than we do.
If we had no monarchy we could open up Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace to tourism every day of the year just like Versailles gets.
Which do you think gets more annual visits by tourists - Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? Its not even close.
Versailles is in the ile de France, part of the Paris region
Its in Ile de France, it is not in Paris. It is an hour from Paris.
And I note you failed to answer the question. Which gets more annual tourists? Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? If our monarchy was a tourism pull then we would be getting more tourists so do we or does Versailles get more?
It is in the Paris metropolitan area.
Versailles is only one palace, Fontainebleu is the traditional Royal Palace with the exception of Louis 14th to 16th and was also Napoleon's and gets fewer visitors than Buckingham or Windsor.
However that is irrelevant as it is royal weddings and jubilees and coronations which the royal family brings in billions in revenue for, historic palaces make no difference monarchy or republic
I'm a Brexiteer. I think both the UK and the EU (not just the UK, and not just the EU either) are being pricks over the full FTA.
State Aid and Fish (WTF?) are silly hills to die-on for a full FTA that is in both parties interests, and where both have come so far already.
Both need to put their cocks away, get round the negotiating table, eat some humble pie where necessary, and do a f--king deal.
I may not have expressed it that way but I agree entirely
If Fish is such a silly hill to die on, then why are the EU intent on dying on it?
Fish is hugely totemic and important way, way beyond its economic significance. For both sides
If the UK concedes control of our waters, then whatever the merits of the case, the political impact will quite simply be colossal.
Discontent with the tory government is building among the the brexit faithful. You can sense it on the twitter feeds, the call in programmes, the comments below the Mail articles.
A bad brexit that betrays the brexiteers' idea of the sturdy honest British trawler man is lethal for the tories. Lethal.
In all seriousness, borrowing to fund FTTP seems like a completely sensible decision to me. I don't know who could not support it.
Why if we borrow money, should we not have ownership of the asset? Why does BT get to own it?
Because it would cost us more money to purchase Openreach. It would make Openreach less productive. It would generate fewer taxes.
There is no good reason to do that.
If we want to pay to incentivise FTTP then we would be paying for a service not an asset which can be done at a fraction of the cost - and Openreach can competitively tender for that at a fraction of the cost. Why would you spend far more money to do it a different way?
And that's before getting into whether universal FTTP is even a good idea, which it probably isn't given 5G and Satellite Internet developments.
5G and satellite will never match or out-compete FTTP, to suggest otherwise shows a complete lack of knowledge.
I'm not suggesting in this case we do purchase Openreach, I am suggesting if we are to get Openreach to build a nationwide FTTP network (which we should do), we should co-finance it in a new joint company where the Government gives the majority of the funding but retains ownership of at least part/all of the asset.
In any negotiation there is a strong party and a weak party. The UK is the weak party, this is obvious.
This is the problem, you actually think the UK is weak.
I know you are an uber-loyalist but perhaps you can elucidate on that
He said the UK is the weak party . . . it is not. We have a higher GDP per capita than they do, a higher median income than they do and they have a trading surplus with us. On any objective measure we are as strong or stronger per capita than they are.
It's not a per capita issue. Mo Farah may be stronger and fitter, on per-cell basis, than Mike Tyson. Who you gonna back in a fight?
Of course it is a per capita issue. Everything in economics should be meaningfully considered per capita, it is the only metric that really matters.
Luxembourg has a GDP of $70.89 bn, $116,639 per capita Nigeria has a GDP of $397.3 bn, $2,028 per capita
Would you rather be Nigeria or Luxembourg there?
We are talking about relative strength, and perhaps you would have been triggered a bit less if CHB had written "In any negotiation there is a stronger party and a weaker party."
The Monaco question nails it anyway.
Yes the Monaco question does nail it. Monaco are far stronger than the EU.
Is there any level of granularity at which this argument fails? I ask because it's just occurred to me that I am richer per capita than the EU. If I am therefore stronger, what should I be asking for?
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
That makes no sense at all.
You do realise don't you that Versailles is not in Paris? So Versailles is regularly getting tourists precisely because France doesn't have a monarch clogging up the Palace and blocking it from access to tourists? But they don't appear in Paris's tourism figures precisely because its not in Paris. That undermines your argument and goes to why the whole of France gets more tourism than we do.
If we had no monarchy we could open up Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace to tourism every day of the year just like Versailles gets.
Which do you think gets more annual visits by tourists - Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? Its not even close.
Versailles is in the ile de France, part of the Paris region
Its in Ile de France, it is not in Paris. It is an hour from Paris.
And I note you failed to answer the question. Which gets more annual tourists? Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? If our monarchy was a tourism pull then we would be getting more tourists so do we or does Versailles get more?
It is in the Paris metropolitan area.
Versailles is only one palace, Fontainebleu is the traditional Royal Palace with the exception of Louis 14th and gets fewer visitors than Buckingham or Windsor.
However that is irrelevant as it is royal weddings and jubilees and coronations which the royal family brings in billions in revenue for, historic palaces make no difference monarchy or republic
So that’s why they keep breeding? There had to be a reason
In any negotiation there is a strong party and a weak party. The UK is the weak party, this is obvious.
This is the problem, you actually think the UK is weak.
I know you are an uber-loyalist but perhaps you can elucidate on that
He said the UK is the weak party . . . it is not. We have a higher GDP per capita than they do, a higher median income than they do and they have a trading surplus with us they're keen to protect. On any objective measure we are as strong or stronger per capita than they are.
So they can make and sell stuff cheaper than we can - how is that to our advantage?
France gets more visitors than the UK because it is centrally surrounded by most of the richest countries in Europe, simples. It’s an easy drive or train trip from much of Spain, northern Italy, switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and the southern UK.
The UK is by comparison a lot more hassle to get to.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
They earn more than a President and their family would and cost about the same as maintaining and protecting the Macrons if not slightly cheaper and certainly cheaper than protecting the POTUS
No we just have an Irish style head of state who has a four bed detached, greets visitors and opens supermarkets, gives out the odd gong not really expensive.
We cannot have an Irish style head of state, we are a permanent UN Security Council member and a G7 and G20 member unlike Ireland, we would at least have to have a President the equivalent of Macron in pomp, security detail and residences and powers to reflect our status.
I have nothing against the president of Ireland but barely anyone has heard of him outside Ireland and he raises no revenue
And cost very little, ideal. The tourist will come for the history. Who cares if people know who the head of state is, I bet most UK citizens could name more than five PM’s world wide let alone heads of state.
They will net less to the Treasury than the royals because they will not earn billions in revenue. We would have to have a President the equivalent of Macron at least to reflect our power and status, especially post Brexit.
Virtually everybody worldwide knows who the Queen is, virtually nobody outside Ireland knows who the Irish President is
An Irish style president would sum up our global position post brexit perfectly.
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
We can be splendid. But equality is about the maths.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
I don't think you're fully appreciating the situation. The UK has a 72 billion dollar trade deficit (pa) with the EU. To take it to the extreme; if all trade between our blocs ceases, the UK is 72 bn a year richer, the EU 72 bn poorer.
So the one EU country with whom we do have a trade surplus has us by the short and curlies? PS it's Ireland.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
They earn more than a President and their family would and cost about the same as maintaining and protecting the Macrons if not slightly cheaper and certainly cheaper than protecting the POTUS
No we just have an Irish style head of state who has a four bed detached, greets visitors and opens supermarkets, gives out the odd gong not really expensive.
We cannot have an Irish style head of state, we are a permanent UN Security Council member and a G7 and G20 member unlike Ireland, we would at least have to have a President the equivalent of Macron in pomp, security detail and residences and powers to reflect our status.
I have nothing against the president of Ireland but barely anyone has heard of him outside Ireland and he raises no revenue
And cost very little, ideal. The tourist will come for the history. Who cares if people know who the head of state is, I bet most UK citizens could name more than five PM’s world wide let alone heads of state.
They will net less to the Treasury than the royals because they will not earn billions in revenue. We would have to have a President the equivalent of Macron at least to reflect our power and status, especially post Brexit.
Virtually everybody worldwide knows who the Queen is, virtually nobody outside Ireland knows who the Irish President is
An Irish style president would sum up our global position post brexit perfectly.
For the left who hate their own country and its traditions and want us just to be a region of a Federal EU of course, fortunately the left were trounced at the general election last year and we have a Tory government with an 80 seat majority
What penny needs to drop in Brussels? No Deal will be no problem for the UK, why do we even care what they think now?
That the UK is going to be an equal sovereign nation and not a supplicant colony subjugated to their rules.
Equal my arse
You're right we're not equal, we're better than them. But I'm being polite.
That’s the problem you actually believe that rubbish.
Its not rubbish. How would you like to measure it?
GDP per capita? Median household income? Median wages?
On any reasonable metric the UK is better than the EU.
This is all so much bollocks.
The UK is not "better" than the EU, and the EU is not "better" than the UK. The UK is simply too different to exist successfully within the EU.
The UK and the EU won't come to trade terms because they are culturally misaligned, and if there is one thing you think everyone would've come to understand by now it's that culture usually trumps economics in the here and now. The EU thinks it's the sole legitimate voice of the European people and wants the UK locked into its orbit; the UK thinks that the EU is a meddlesome, overbearing pain in the arse and wants free of it. The position of each is anathema to the other and neither is willing to budge just to make it a bit easier and more convenient for freight to criss-cross the Channel.
The net result of this is not that the EU will offer concessions because it has a trade deficit with the UK and wants a few more fish, or that the UK will cave because the EU is bigger than it is. It's that the two will at best set about ignoring each other, or at worst come to hate each other, and in any event will just grow further and further and further apart.
I think that's correct, but I think indifference is more likely than hostility. What we want, and what most European politicians want, are just not compatible. People have talked about the EU's coronavirus fund as being their "Hamilton moment." Their dream, our nightmare.
What it comes down to in the end, is that like the Russians, we view WWII very differently to most European politicians. For us a brutal test which we and the Russians passed. For the rest, the point where their systems of governance failed.
That seems reasonable, although I think there's also a desire in this country not to be caught up in grandiose schemes cooked up in distant capitals. Indeed, contrary to a lot of the rather off-beam attempts at analysis that followed the Leave vote, I don't think it was motivated to any significant degree by imperial nostalgia - quite the reverse. The EU itself is an empire-building project; the typical Leave voter is probably rather more interested in enjoying a quiet life.
There's a lot of New York Real Estate types who are tugging their collars nervously. They are worried that Trump is about to fuck it up for all of them by having a spot light shone on their blatantly illegal activity (properties having wildly different value depending on the form being filed in).
I am not knocking SpaceX as a technology either - but it's nowhere close to delivering 1Gb and beyond and it simply will not scale as FTTP can.
5G as I say in theory could work but Vodafone (source: myself) amongst others concluded about three years ago 5G would never be a goer for 1Gb across the country.
You would need to more than double the amount of sites and with NIMBYism you'll never get them all built.
The biggest problem with 5G is for 1Gb+ speeds you need very high frequency and the range on it is terrible. You'd have to in effect put them on top of every telegraph pole to get anything close to resembling FTTP speed. You'd have to lay the fibre or use microwave (which cuts the speed) and it falls down very quickly.
For large cities yes, for the countryside absolutely not.
Openreach and UK Gov have accepted that, it's one of the few wise decisions BT has made lately.
Punters who think POTUS 2020 is POTUS 2016 fail to comprehend:
1. This is not Hilary Clinton, one of the most divisive candidates you could put up 2. Biden is way more Common Joe than Clinton i.e relatable 3. Clinton won the popular vote and the idea that Trump or the GOP has advanced since has no notable back up 4. The polling evidence suggests that swing voters are not with Trump. His base though solid has precious little froth to reach to the top of the pint glass. 5. Biden is a highly optimistic guy, Trump is not. What do you think will play?
Could it go wrong for the Democrats? Yes but only if they balls it up, its not the GOPs to take away.
Alex Navalny. So the doctors reports in Russia weren't complete bull. The other day I suggested that Navalny's symptoms looked like organo-phosphate poisoning . German doctors suggest exposure to a cholinesterase inhibitor, a key effect of organo phosphates. If that's what was used, they are fantastic personal kill weapon. Often the most severe symptoms can fade once exposure is lost but the impacts can go on..and on...so even if you live it will often just keep hurting
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
I doubt it, we could just leverage Windsor and Buck house better If the royals weren’t about, They could be open 365 days a year, it doesn’t limit visitors to Versailles that the French royal family are long gone.
HYUFD is also arguing for the Panda treatment of the RF - maintained at great public expense to breed very publicly. Rather inhumane really.
They earn more than a President and their family would and cost about the same as maintaining and protecting the Macrons if not slightly cheaper and certainly cheaper than protecting the POTUS
No we just have an Irish style head of state who has a four bed detached, greets visitors and opens supermarkets, gives out the odd gong not really expensive.
We cannot have an Irish style head of state, we are a permanent UN Security Council member and a G7 and G20 member unlike Ireland, we would at least have to have a President the equivalent of Macron in pomp, security detail and residences and powers to reflect our status.
I have nothing against the president of Ireland but barely anyone has heard of him outside Ireland and he raises no revenue
And cost very little, ideal. The tourist will come for the history. Who cares if people know who the head of state is, I bet most UK citizens could name more than five PM’s world wide let alone heads of state.
They will net less to the Treasury than the royals because they will not earn billions in revenue. We would have to have a President the equivalent of Macron at least to reflect our power and status, especially post Brexit.
Virtually everybody worldwide knows who the Queen is, virtually nobody outside Ireland knows who the Irish President is
An Irish style president would sum up our global position post brexit perfectly.
For the left who hate their own country and its traditions and want us just to be a region of a Federal EU of course, fortunately the left were trounced at the general election last year and we have a Tory government with an 80 seat majority
I think I’m a moderate centrist would never vote labour in its current corrupt union financed offering and couldn’t vote Tory who’s major protagonists are only there to protect certain wealthy vested interests. But everybody thinks they represent the centre.
Fine but France is the nation most visited by tourists in the world, the UK is only the 10th most visited nation (though London is the 3rd most visited city)
We had and arguably still have a bigger economy but they have Paris, the Alps for skiing, the south of France with better weather for their beaches as well as more countryside and still history like we have with their chateaux and museums
But they don’t have the Queen, so they can’t have more visitors, surely.
People go to the South of France for sunnier weathier, to the Alps for Skiing etc, none of which we have. There are not that many celebrities taking their yachts to the North Sea and English Channel compared to the Mediterranean
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
That makes no sense at all.
You do realise don't you that Versailles is not in Paris? So Versailles is regularly getting tourists precisely because France doesn't have a monarch clogging up the Palace and blocking it from access to tourists? But they don't appear in Paris's tourism figures precisely because its not in Paris. That undermines your argument and goes to why the whole of France gets more tourism than we do.
If we had no monarchy we could open up Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace to tourism every day of the year just like Versailles gets.
Which do you think gets more annual visits by tourists - Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? Its not even close.
Have you been to any of those places? I've only seen Windsor from the outside, but B Palace is like a 5 star hotel in East Berlin in 1985 only shabbier and not so funny. I don't think de-monarching it is going to enhance its appeal as much as you think it is.
I've been to Versailles and the Louvre in France, to Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. Walked past Buckingham Palace but not been into it - if we were a Republic I would have paid to go in, just like did to get into Versailles.
Have we really reached that level of sh*te were Boris & Co believe patriotic music will strike fear into Johnny Forriner and make the UK supreme uber alles?
Things must be worse than I thought. What a bunch of scoundrels....
There's a lot of New York Real Estate types who are tugging their collars nervously. They are worried that Trump is about to fuck it up for all of them by having a spot light shone on their blatantly illegal activity (properties having wildly different value depending on the form being filed in).
In all seriousness, borrowing to fund FTTP seems like a completely sensible decision to me. I don't know who could not support it.
Why if we borrow money, should we not have ownership of the asset? Why does BT get to own it?
Because it would cost us more money to purchase Openreach. It would make Openreach less productive. It would generate fewer taxes.
There is no good reason to do that.
If we want to pay to incentivise FTTP then we would be paying for a service not an asset which can be done at a fraction of the cost - and Openreach can competitively tender for that at a fraction of the cost. Why would you spend far more money to do it a different way?
And that's before getting into whether universal FTTP is even a good idea, which it probably isn't given 5G and Satellite Internet developments.
Make Openreach less productive?
Seriously?
They could only be less productive if they were actually cutting phone lines and blowing up telegraph poles.
I'm a Brexiteer. I think both the UK and the EU (not just the UK, and not just the EU either) are being pricks over the full FTA.
State Aid and Fish (WTF?) are silly hills to die-on for a full FTA that is in both parties interests, and where both have come so far already.
Both need to put their cocks away, get round the negotiating table, eat some humble pie where necessary, and do a f--king deal.
I may not have expressed it that way but I agree entirely
If Fish is such a silly hill to die on, then why are the EU intent on dying on it?
Fish is hugely totemic and important way, way beyond its economic significance. For both sides
If the UK concedes control of our waters, then whatever the merits of the case, the political impact will quite simply be colossal.
Discontent with the tory government is building among the the brexit faithful. You can sense it on the twitter feeds, the call in programmes, the comments below the Mail articles.
A bad brexit that betrays the brexiteers' idea of the sturdy honest British trawler man is lethal for the tories. Lethal.
hasn't even Barnier said that fish is a stupid hill for the EU to be fighting on?
Comments
The UK is not "better" than the EU, and the EU is not "better" than the UK. The UK is simply too different to exist successfully within the EU.
The UK and the EU won't come to trade terms because they are culturally misaligned, and if there is one thing you think everyone would've come to understand by now it's that culture usually trumps economics in the here and now. The EU thinks it's the sole legitimate voice of the European people and wants the UK locked into its orbit; the UK thinks that the EU is a meddlesome, overbearing pain in the arse and wants free of it. The position of each is anathema to the other and neither is willing to budge just to make it a bit easier and more convenient for freight to criss-cross the Channel.
The net result of this is not that the EU will offer concessions because it has a trade deficit with the UK and wants a few more fish, or that the UK will cave because the EU is bigger than it is. It's that the two will at best set about ignoring each other, or at worst come to hate each other, and in any event will just grow further and further and further apart.
Is everyone going to get this excited about whether the Uk signs a trade deal with the US, Canada or India? Bizarre what people get fixated on, the established global trade order has had nitroglycerin detonated under it in the last few years. And it’s got the sqrt of zero to do with UK-EU relations.
The EU is roughly 5 times the GDP, 7 times the population.
Any reciprocal deal is worth a lot more to us than it is to them, and that matters in a negotiation.
It's nothing personal, it's just maths. Or, to quote BoJo's favourite film, "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business."
If he hadn't objected to the term equals, I wouldn't have needed to say why we're stronger than they are.
The problem Europhiles have is they they think more people equals better rather than being better off is better.
The UK may lose out from a no deal more economically in the short term than the EU (though I'm not sure that's the case). Its certainly debatable because we are in an unprecedented situation.
The point is that the voters don;t mind. They know that brexit is their decision, their mandate. They know that because they repeated the order multiple times.
The political ramifications of a no deal are far, far milder than the ramifications of a bad deal. And so the UK can stick to its position comfortably.
Is that the case in Brussels? who knows. Who knows what the 27 will really make of a no deal. They are being told we will buckle. We won;t. Boris can't.
That maths clearly shows why we are stronger and better off than they are. Why is it not 7 times the GDP, 7 times the population? Or even 8 times the GDP, 7 times the population?
More population each of whom is poorer than you are, is not better.
A reciprocal deal is not necessarily worth a lot more to us than it is to them, especially when they're the ones with the trade surplus to lose.
As I posted too more people go to London than to Paris, so if we did not have the Royal Family and royal weddings and jubilees etc centred on London we would have even fewer visitors relative to France
EU GDP per capita $43,188 (and I believe that is inflated by including us, the true picture is less than that)
Yes. Yes I do.
The impact of a cave in deal is simply horrible for the conservatives. Horrible. They get this wrong they unleash the BP, this time for good. The tories won't get another chance from Brexiteer voters.
That's far, far worse than some short term economic disruption they can blame on COVID.
Luxembourg has a GDP of $70.89 bn, $116,639 per capita
Nigeria has a GDP of $397.3 bn, $2,028 per capita
Would you rather be Nigeria or Luxembourg there?
Never play with your instrument in your dressing gown
https://twitter.com/petercrouch/status/1297892853004357632
UK exports per head to the EU are way bigger than EU exports per head to the UK.
You can't just flit between per head and block totals to shore up a case.
I could respect a "we don't care what the EU thinks", but the whining that the EU aren't treating us as equals that some Brexit supporters go in for is fairly pathetic. Especially when the early days of Brexit were all about how we held all the cards and could bend the EU to our will.
The Monaco question nails it anyway.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/apr/29/royal-wedding-tourism-boost
No play at all tomorrow a distinct possibility, yet draw is still 1.46, incredible
Storm Francis a complete myth!!
What it comes down to in the end, is that like the Russians, we view WWII very differently to most European politicians. For us a brutal test which we and the Russians passed. For the rest, the point where their systems of governance failed.
You do realise don't you that Versailles is not in Paris? So Versailles is regularly getting tourists precisely because France doesn't have a monarch clogging up the Palace and blocking it from access to tourists? But they don't appear in Paris's tourism figures precisely because its not in Paris. That undermines your argument and goes to why the whole of France gets more tourism than we do.
If we had no monarchy we could open up Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace to tourism every day of the year just like Versailles gets.
Which do you think gets more annual visits by tourists - Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? Its not even close.
I have nothing against the president of Ireland but barely anyone has heard of him outside Ireland and he raises no revenue
Fine. Then prepare for No Deal. But don't spend half your time insulting Eurocrats (Nazi punishments, remember those?) and half your time whining about not being taken at your inflated self-estimation.
Get the prep for no deal in place; the forms, the penpushers, the lorry parks. Because yes- the government has a choice between the pain of signing a deal and the pain of no deal.
Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.
The EU has got a trade surplus to lose with us, but don't exaggerate.
Why if we borrow money, should we not have ownership of the asset? Why does BT get to own it?
And I note you failed to answer the question. Which gets more annual tourists? Versailles, Buckingham or Windsor? If our monarchy was a tourism pull then we would be getting more tourists so do we or does Versailles get more?
Virtually everybody worldwide knows who the Queen is, virtually nobody outside Ireland knows who the Irish President is
It would make Openreach less productive.
It would generate fewer taxes.
There is no good reason to do that.
If we want to pay to incentivise FTTP then we would be paying for a service not an asset which can be done at a fraction of the cost - and Openreach can competitively tender for that at a fraction of the cost. Why would you spend far more money to do it a different way?
And that's before getting into whether universal FTTP is even a good idea, which it probably isn't given 5G and Satellite Internet developments.
Versailles is only one palace, Fontainebleu is the traditional Royal Palace with the exception of Louis 14th to 16th and was also Napoleon's and gets fewer visitors than Buckingham or Windsor.
However that is irrelevant as it is royal weddings and jubilees and coronations which the royal family brings in billions in revenue for, historic palaces make no difference monarchy or republic
Fish is hugely totemic and important way, way beyond its economic significance. For both sides
If the UK concedes control of our waters, then whatever the merits of the case, the political impact will quite simply be colossal.
Discontent with the tory government is building among the the brexit faithful. You can sense it on the twitter feeds, the call in programmes, the comments below the Mail articles.
A bad brexit that betrays the brexiteers' idea of the sturdy honest British trawler man is lethal for the tories. Lethal.
I'm not suggesting in this case we do purchase Openreach, I am suggesting if we are to get Openreach to build a nationwide FTTP network (which we should do), we should co-finance it in a new joint company where the Government gives the majority of the funding but retains ownership of at least part/all of the asset.
To have 5G on anything like the scale or speed of FTTP, you'd need to have micro-sites near every home, nobody is ever going to allow that.
FTTP can run underground in existing ducts or via telegraph poles.
The UK is by comparison a lot more hassle to get to.
No surprise there then
PS it's Ireland.
5G as I say in theory could work but Vodafone (source: myself) amongst others concluded about three years ago 5G would never be a goer for 1Gb across the country.
You would need to more than double the amount of sites and with NIMBYism you'll never get them all built.
The biggest problem with 5G is for 1Gb+ speeds you need very high frequency and the range on it is terrible. You'd have to in effect put them on top of every telegraph pole to get anything close to resembling FTTP speed. You'd have to lay the fibre or use microwave (which cuts the speed) and it falls down very quickly.
For large cities yes, for the countryside absolutely not.
Openreach and UK Gov have accepted that, it's one of the few wise decisions BT has made lately.
Punters who think POTUS 2020 is POTUS 2016 fail to comprehend:
1. This is not Hilary Clinton, one of the most divisive candidates you could put up
2. Biden is way more Common Joe than Clinton i.e relatable
3. Clinton won the popular vote and the idea that Trump or the GOP has advanced since has no notable back up
4. The polling evidence suggests that swing voters are not with Trump. His base though solid has precious little froth to reach to the top of the pint glass.
5. Biden is a highly optimistic guy, Trump is not. What do you think will play?
Could it go wrong for the Democrats? Yes but only if they balls it up, its not the GOPs to take away.
Alex Navalny. So the doctors reports in Russia weren't complete bull. The other day I suggested that Navalny's symptoms looked like organo-phosphate poisoning . German doctors suggest exposure to a cholinesterase inhibitor, a key effect of organo phosphates. If that's what was used, they are fantastic personal kill weapon. Often the most severe symptoms can fade once exposure is lost but the impacts can go on..and on...so even if you live it will often just keep hurting
Have we really reached that level of sh*te were Boris & Co believe patriotic music will strike fear into Johnny Forriner and make the UK supreme uber alles?
Things must be worse than I thought. What a bunch of scoundrels....
https://twitter.com/NaphiSoc/status/1297916194507255811
Seriously?
They could only be less productive if they were actually cutting phone lines and blowing up telegraph poles.
State aid is another matter.
Utter madness.