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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Fisking the PM – examining the background to his controversial EU move
BREAKING: Boris Johnson’s spokesman confirms they will pass a new law to "clarify specific elements of the Northern Ireland Protocol in domestic law.”EU warns any attempt to renege on the Brexit withdrawal agreement will wreck any chance of a trade deal. https://t.co/6VDYBuWWwM
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The stifling of Parliament, the emasculation of the judiciary, the attacks on the media and lawyers, the breaking of international treaties are all happening in plain sight. Right wingers who have spent years talking piously about liberty and democracy have absolutely no problem with any of it.
'Our priority as Conservatives is to get
Brexit done – so that we can unleash
the potential of this great country. This will be
a new relationship based on free trade
and friendly cooperation, not on the EU’s
treaties or EU law. There will be no political
alignment with the EU. We will keep the
UK out of the single market, out of any
form of customs union, and end the role
of the European Court of Justice.
This future relationship will be one that
allows us to:
Take back control of our laws.
Take back control of our money.
Control our own trade policy.
Introduce an Australian-style points based immigration.
Raise standards in areas like workers’
rights, animal welfare, agriculture and
the environment.
Ensure we are in full control of our
fishing waters.'
The current EU position does not allow for that.
In that case the Tory manifesto also promised 'we will not extend the implementation
period beyond December 2020'
https://assets-global.website-files.com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/5dda924905da587992a064ba_Conservative 2019 Manifesto.pdf
Hey Presto we're talking about Brexit.
Job done.
Before you answer, if another country decided to violate treaties they had signed with us, I am sure you would expect the UK to react strongly.
If the UK avoids a hard border in the Irish Sea it will still not impose a hard border within Ireland as per the Withdrawal Agreement and as Parliament is sovereign and the Tories have an 80 seat majority can amend the WA accordingly to reflect that
The government is, however, bound by the treaty which it signed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/07/belarus-opposition-leader-maria-kolesnikova-snatched-from-street-in-minsk-reports
Press freedom is basically about being able to investigate and report on matters of public interest (I put that in to differentiate from the dodgy tabloid reporting of private lives) without being harassed or censored. It is not about having an automatic right to whatever information they want on demand.
The Government refusing to cooperate with journalists and deciding not to invite them to briefings or hand over information they don't have to is not impinging on Press freedom. I don't care what the Council of Europe says about it, the Government's actions may be stupid and self defeating but they are not threatening the rights of the press to report what they want.
Just because they face a general election some time down the road does not give them the right to ignore the law.
As Cyclefree points out, they are free in law to legislate to set aside treaty provisions - but that would be in this case a direct abrogation of the treaty. You attempts to argue otherwise are the merest sophistry.
The headline numbers you are looking at are reporting date, not specimen date.
That graph Peston includes is ridiculous and overtly provocative because it ignores the positivity rate and hence gives no indication of overall infection levels. In March the true number must have been something like 150-200k a day.
And yet the positivity rate now is still very low, under 1%. So how many cases are we really missing now? And perhaps the Track N Trace is actually doing the job and picking up traveller related clusters?
Maybe my huge wedge* was enough to move the markets...
* £5
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2020/sep/05/kentucky-derby-2020-empty-stands-and-armed-militias-at-americas-most-famous-race
https://twitter.com/PhilipHammondUK/status/1302989829358137344
Either :
- The ONS was wrong
- There was truly massive change in the community infection rate after that date
- Or the case rate rise will stop.
for reference -
Machines can hold simple conversations and have been found to improve mental health"
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/07/robots-used-uk-care-homes-help-reduce-loneliness
Maybe you've lulled the Sporting traders into a false sense of security.
Then we can put all this behind us and move on with our lives.
Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
I am a big fan of Declassified UK but refusing to deal with them is simply not oppressive in the way it is being made out.
Given the way people act with such hysteria over No Deal you'd think it'd be a landslide the other way not just two to one.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1302977246995648513
Who exactly might be facing a reduction, and who in turn might be expecting a more prosperous future?
I venture they are not a congruent set...
The ONS numbers have been essentially flat since the beginning of June
Cases have been rising since the end of June.
Where as on holiday you will be interacting with loads of different people from all over Europe in a big melting pot, sherbets every day, leads to zero social distancing, etc etc etc. And then when people return, we have no real ability to trace where they got it, who they passed it on to.
And of course lots of people have gone to places like Spain and France where it was already on the upward tick.
Suppose you sign a mortgage agreement with a bank and, because you are sovereign over your bank account (which you are, until of course Mrs HYUFD arrives), a year later you decide to amend your mortgage agreement to reflect the fact that you don't want to make the monthly payments any more.
All good?
Since we cannot trust anything the Govt says - since we have no idea what is posturing and what is actual intention - then all we can do is let it play out until we get to 1st Jan 2021. After that, the reality of Brexit will be there for all to see. Only then can we really judge.
I expect there to be a loud burst of jingoist rah-rah on New Year's Eve followed by a wake up call over the first few weeks.
I am not expecting it to be pleasant.
70% of covidians are asymptomatic, most people who have it don't even know they have it unless for some reason they get tested.
It's not that the Government refuse to accredit some fringe outfit, it's that they explicitly ban 'accredited' news organizations from receiving briefings that are made available others.
Banning the Mirror from BoZo's bus, for example.
It doesn't stop the Mirror writing a story, but it absolutely stops them asking pertinent questions, which is the point of 'a free press holding people to account'
I am often wrong. In science, that is the whole point. Trying to impress the universe with your arguments is... entertaining. For suitably distant bystanders. I met someone who had dealt with Louis Slotin. The ultimate example of someone who failed to impress reality with his arguments.
And if I'm right then by next year the vast majority will be thinking "what was all the fuss about?"
* Knocks wood
I'm hoping Scotland is going to be included in the next release of the ONS figures as they started doing stuff on the 18th of August.
All of the wild gyrations by BoZo, each of which is loudly cheered by the same people who were cheering the opposite the day before, is designed to postpone the moment of realisation for one more day...
Once the wave function collapses and the cheerleaders realise the cat has been dead since before BoZo wrote his 2 articles, his days are numbered
If we were going to do this, we needed to have a proper testing system upon return. And politically it didn't really help the government as they swapped and changed which countries were "air-bridged" and led to the continued "its confusing" narrative.
Are they reaching enough younger people? The actual testing suggests a big rise in 17-21 year olds, are they getting a representative sample?
Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?
Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
Hell, even if I said the data out of NC didn't look good for him this morning.
Mind you, good piece on NBC re NC: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/presidential-race-narrows-north-carolina-voters-say-they-want-face-n1239255
But you seem rather more rattled than when you were going rah-rah, waving your Irish passport in the faces of those less fortunate....
Johnson won the polls that mattered (the referendum and the election), now he needs to do whatever he thinks is best, subject to Parliamentary approval where appropriate - then be judged or damned in four years time on the results of that.
http://covidtracker.uksouth.cloudapp.azure.com/
No sound here, but seems like a good answer. One does get a slight twinge of Covid US betting related worries seeing him out in the open like this though !