Confirms the Tories will need another majority in 2024 to stay in power, the DUP would probably now prefer the whole UK to be linked closer to EEA and CU regulations under Starmer than what Boris agreed with the EU today and Davey and the LDs would almost certainly back Starmer too
Most probably a poor deal, eclipsed by the illusion of a last minute brinkmanship "victory" against the odds.
If there's a deal Hardcore Remainers will say it's a poor deal, a cave, a capitulation, a victory for the EU etc. Hardcore Leavers will call it a travesty, an outrage and a surrender.
Mild Leavers will point out the advantages, wins and the freedoms, and what was gained through hard negotiations with the EU - including where they traded. Mild Remainers will say that it's "thin" and unambitious and loses many existing advantages but be grateful there's a deal at all - and will try and build on it in future.
The latter two will get totally crowded out by the noise on social and mainstream media of the former two.
My best guess for a compromise is a can-kick/fudge - i.e. we agree regression governance on LPF clauses for 10 years only subject to review of scope/applicability of the whole FTA at that stage and bilateral UK-EU arbitration for piss-taking in the meantime. So it gives some medium-term stability and surety to the EU of a LPF but also isn't "permanent" either.
The EU has to move on fish though. We aren't accepting 18% only over 10 years. They know that.
Yep. Something like this. Fish and FOM are the "wins". Stay aligned on most other things. Serious divergence someday over the rainbow.
I don't think aligned is an issue. It's not about customs or regulatory alignemnt in goods and services. It's about a basic floor.
We already exceed EU environmental, social, welfare and labour standards in most areas so i can only imagine LPF is an issue at the margins and with regression governance and perhaps some sleight of hand potential with state aid.
I've always found the 'aligned' issue strange. I thought we were leaving because we didn't want to be aligned. And even if we are aligned now what reason is there to believe we will stay aligned indefinitely?
Somebody should let Betfair know so that they can terminate the activities of the moneylaunderers using their remaining open Presidential markets.
Safe harbour day doesn't mean that the results can't change after today. It means no new cases can be filed with the courts after today. Existing cases still need to be resolved, but no new ones can start.
https://www.democracydocket.com/ is a great site for an overview of outstanding cases. Currently 39 active cases left, that number should tick down now over next few days as they get dismissed and the litigants won't be able to file new ones to replace them.
Confirms the Tories will need another majority in 2024 to stay in power, the DUP would probably now prefer the whole UK to be linked closer to EEA and CU regulations under Starmer than what Boris agreed with the EU today and Davey and the LDs would almost certainly back Starmer too
Don't be so downhearted over the deal, if it looks and smells like a victory for Boris, it must be a victory.
Don't forget if Starmer whips the Parliamentary Labour Party then Johnson can offer a free Tory vote, making the deal a disastrous Labour construct.
This is why we should wait for the full text. I'd be astonished if British (and Irish) sausages for that matter weren't freely traded through our islands.
It may depend or be linked to a clause in the full FTA though.
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Most probably a poor deal, eclipsed by the illusion of a last minute brinkmanship "victory" against the odds.
If there's a deal Hardcore Remainers will say it's a poor deal, a cave, a capitulation, a victory for the EU etc. Hardcore Leavers will call it a travesty, an outrage and a surrender.
Mild Leavers will point out the advantages, wins and the freedoms, and what was gained through hard negotiations with the EU - including where they traded. Mild Remainers will say that it's "thin" and unambitious and loses many existing advantages but be grateful there's a deal at all - and will try and build on it in future.
The latter two will get totally crowded out by the noise on social and mainstream media of the former two.
You can forget about the barking mad Uber-Leavers. This will be seen as a close call victory, brokered by Johnson. It will of course in reality will be nothing of the sort.
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Thanks to TV Presenters who don't think the rules apply to them. 😉
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
I'd say the Government should "invite" people to voluntarily lock-down from this weekend until 23rd December, and for those who break up from school next week - only going onto other households if they are symptomless by then.
Confirms the Tories will need another majority in 2024 to stay in power, the DUP would probably now prefer the whole UK to be linked closer to EEA and CU regulations under Starmer than what Boris agreed with the EU today and Davey and the LDs would almost certainly back Starmer too
Don't be so downhearted over the deal, if it looks and smells like a victory for Boris, it must be a victory.
Don't forget if Starmer whips the Parliamentary Labour Party then Johnson can offer a free Tory vote, making the deal a disastrous Labour construct.
Four more years!
I was talking what would happen if 2024 produced a hung parliament, not what would happen if there was a deal now
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Bullshit. London has huge hospital capacity and that's what the whole scare is about supposedly. Even lockdown didn't make much difference in London, the baseline level of activity is simply too high and only a speedy vaccine rollout will have an effect.
Once again the defensive use of limited vaccine quantities on the immobile old means we will have to be in lockdown for significantly longer than if we used it to target likely susperspreaders by vocation/age.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
My best guess for a compromise is a can-kick/fudge - i.e. we agree regression governance on LPF clauses for 10 years only subject to review of scope/applicability of the whole FTA at that stage and bilateral UK-EU arbitration for piss-taking in the meantime. So it gives some medium-term stability and surety to the EU of a LPF but also isn't "permanent" either.
The EU has to move on fish though. We aren't accepting 18% only over 10 years. They know that.
Yep. Something like this. Fish and FOM are the "wins". Stay aligned on most other things. Serious divergence someday over the rainbow.
I don't think aligned is an issue. It's not about customs or regulatory alignemnt in goods and services. It's about a basic floor.
We already exceed EU environmental, social, welfare and labour standards in most areas so i can only imagine LPF is an issue at the margins and with regression governance and perhaps some sleight of hand potential with state aid.
I've always found the 'aligned' issue strange. I thought we were leaving because we didn't want to be aligned. And even if we are aligned now what reason is there to believe we will stay aligned indefinitely?
The issue is dynamic alignment, I think, and how broad its scope is. If it was agreeing a basic floor of "western" standards for all of these things, we wouldn't have any issue whatsoever.
Then again, the obvious fudge is to agree it for now, and limit its scope, and cross that bridge if and when we come to it.
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Thanks to TV Presenters who don't think the rules apply to them. 😉
To make things worse Sky's Inzamam Rashid travelled from Manchester (tier 3) to attend
Given the hounding politicians get by the press for doing the same thing, no.
You are being inconsistent. You believe Burley should be sacked, as do I. You do not believe Cummings and Jenrick should have been sacked. In fact you believe they were unfairly hounded. I say sack the lot of them.
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
I'd say the Government should "invite" people to voluntarily lock-down from this weekend until 23rd December, and for those who break up from school next week - only going onto other households if they are symptomless by then.
It's certainly what we are doing.
My wife and I already have to all intents and purposes
Given the hounding politicians get by the press for doing the same thing, no.
You are being inconsistent. You believe Burley should be sacked, as do I. You do not believe Cummings and Jenrick should have been sacked. In fact you believe they were unfairly hounded. I say sack the lot of them.
Where did I say they shouldn't be sacked? I thought Cummings should have gone straight away.
This is why we should wait for the full text. I'd be astonished if British (and Irish) sausages for that matter weren't freely traded through our islands.
It may depend or be linked to a clause in the full FTA though.
I'd be pretty surprised if Ireland and NI weren't largely self sufficient on the sausage, mince and pie front.
Given the hounding politicians get by the press for doing the same thing, no.
You are being inconsistent. You believe Burley should be sacked, as do I. You do not believe Cummings and Jenrick should have been sacked. In fact you believe they were unfairly hounded. I say sack the lot of them.
Given the hounding politicians get by the press for doing the same thing, no.
You are being inconsistent. You believe Burley should be sacked, as do I. You do not believe Cummings and Jenrick should have been sacked. In fact you believe they were unfairly hounded. I say sack the lot of them.
Where did I say they shouldn't be sacked? I thought Cummings should have gone straight away.
OK, fair enough. Johnson disagreed with you, unfortunately.
You will be no OJ fan but imo this here is an excellent summary from him of why we are where are on Brexit. You have to read the (short) piece not just the headline -
I agree with much of that. Not something I often say about about an Owen Jones article!
It's a good summary, I thought. Jones is very partisan, of course, but he is often astute on how the politics of things works, the different agendas etc.
Confirms the Tories will need another majority in 2024 to stay in power, the DUP would probably now prefer the whole UK to be linked closer to EEA and CU regulations under Starmer than what Boris agreed with the EU today and Davey and the LDs would almost certainly back Starmer too
Don't be so downhearted over the deal, if it looks and smells like a victory for Boris, it must be a victory.
Don't forget if Starmer whips the Parliamentary Labour Party then Johnson can offer a free Tory vote, making the deal a disastrous Labour construct.
Four more years!
I was talking what would happen if 2024 produced a hung parliament, not what would happen if there was a deal now
I am saying with the EU Deal wind in Johnson's sails, four years from 2024 is in the bag.
This is why we should wait for the full text. I'd be astonished if British (and Irish) sausages for that matter weren't freely traded through our islands.
It may depend or be linked to a clause in the full FTA though.
I'd be pretty surprised if Ireland and NI weren't largely self sufficient on the sausage, mince and pie front.
Perhaps, but this isn't about adequacy of basic supply - it's about choice. And many people in NI will want to buy British products just as people here like to buy Irish as well.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
To try a different and maybe interesting question.
At what point in EU integration will the Austrian State Treaty be violated -
1) Already is? 2) Will be in 10 years? 3) ?
Wasn’t it superseded in 1990 when Germany reunified?
Nope. The 1990 Treaty basically had Germany saying we are cool with that and existing borders.
You could make a case that the EU is currently in breach of... drum roll... international law...
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Thanks to TV Presenters who don't think the rules apply to them. 😉
This is why we should wait for the full text. I'd be astonished if British (and Irish) sausages for that matter weren't freely traded through our islands.
It may depend or be linked to a clause in the full FTA though.
I'd be pretty surprised if Ireland and NI weren't largely self sufficient on the sausage, mince and pie front.
Perhaps, but this isn't about adequacy of basic supply - it's about choice. And many people in NI will want to buy British products just as people here like to buy Irish as well.
Bit late for the DUP (eg) to worry about that, I'd think. Pork and sausage products etc are v. sensitive biosecurity wise - swine flu, foot'n'mouth. Indeed it was the UK who demanded severe measures on things like using them in animal feed, as pointed out here the other day.
Given the hounding politicians get by the press for doing the same thing, no.
You are being inconsistent. You believe Burley should be sacked, as do I. You do not believe Cummings and Jenrick should have been sacked. In fact you believe they were unfairly hounded. I say sack the lot of them.
Where did I say they shouldn't be sacked? I thought Cummings should have gone straight away.
OK, fair enough. Johnson disagreed with you, unfortunately.
And that's got nowt to do with the reaction of the media, a subset of which have turned out to be hypocrites.
This is why we should wait for the full text. I'd be astonished if British (and Irish) sausages for that matter weren't freely traded through our islands.
It may depend or be linked to a clause in the full FTA though.
There is a labelling issue. After a grace period EU labelling cannot be used in GB and vice versa. So yes, British Sausages can be traded in NI providing the manufacturer creates a special NI only pack with a different label.
This is one of the wins that the UK government pushed for - no longer bound by EU standards and dictats. Compounded by Shagger throwing NI off the bus and putting a border down the Irish Sea.
You will be no OJ fan but imo this here is an excellent summary from him of why we are where are on Brexit. You have to read the (short) piece not just the headline -
I agree with much of that. Not something I often say about about an Owen Jones article!
It's a good summary, I thought. Jones is very partisan, of course, but he is often astute on how the politics of things works, the different agendas etc.
Understates Corbyn’s baleful role, but yes, otherwise, pretty much spot on.
Most probably a poor deal, eclipsed by the illusion of a last minute brinkmanship "victory" against the odds.
If there's a deal Hardcore Remainers will say it's a poor deal, a cave, a capitulation, a victory for the EU etc. Hardcore Leavers will call it a travesty, an outrage and a surrender.
Mild Leavers will point out the advantages, wins and the freedoms, and what was gained through hard negotiations with the EU - including where they traded. Mild Remainers will say that it's "thin" and unambitious and loses many existing advantages but be grateful there's a deal at all - and will try and build on it in future.
The latter two will get totally crowded out by the noise on social and mainstream media of the former two.
Most people will say ‘thank god for that’ forget about it until something happens to make them think about it. I doubt many people have a clue what’s going to happen, success will be measured by disruption levels trying to segment people into small groups is unreal, we have those that think they know what’s happening and those who don’t (95%) of the population.
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Thanks to TV Presenters who don't think the rules apply to them. 😉
Don't provoke me or you'll get some lacerating Obiter Dicta.
How will history judge Osborne? He told Cameron he was crazy to plan to hold a referendum. But should he have done more to stop it? Resigned?
Making local councils in the North of England bear the brunt of austerity didn't help Remain's cause.
Citation needed. And a massive non-sequitur to boot.
This paper showing a causal relationship between austerity and the Brexit vote was published in the American Economic Review (one of the top journals in Economics, they only publish the best and most careful research).
Secondly, there were plenty of holes in that paper. The author himself helpfully lists some of them and tries (unconvincingly in my view) to respond to them here:
Item 2, for example, is, despite his attempt at rebuttal, clearly evidence against his proposition.
He ends up hand-waving: "The referendum was won because Leave swayed a non-negligible share of working-age adults into backing it. Many of these groups have been directly and indirectly affected by austerity. If I were to put a figure on the size of the groups, I would estimate that around 35 percentage points of the 52 percentage point Leave support is due to life-long Brexiteers. Out of the rest (17 percentage points), I estimate that between 6-11 percentage points of the Leave vote were due to austerity-induced protest voting."
Protest voting? Yes, sure. It was one of the more disgraceful aspects of the referendum that some influential Labour activists deliberately used the argument that a vote for Leave would 'give Cameron a bloody nose'. But austerity-induced protest voting? How the hell does he know? He hasn't actually found any evidence to support that as the motivation, just correlation. And correlation is not causation.
(And any paper which uses the term 'austerity' is suspect anyway - it's ill-defined and politically loaded. Austerity compared with what counterfactual? That the government continued indefinitely spending four pounds for every three raised in tax, as Darling was doing? In fact public spending continued to increase under Osborne, so I'm not sure what this 'austerity' was supposed to be).
This is why we should wait for the full text. I'd be astonished if British (and Irish) sausages for that matter weren't freely traded through our islands.
It may depend or be linked to a clause in the full FTA though.
There is a labelling issue. After a grace period EU labelling cannot be used in GB and vice versa. So yes, British Sausages can be traded in NI providing the manufacturer creates a special NI only pack with a different label.
This is one of the wins that the UK government pushed for - no longer bound by EU standards and dictats. Compounded by Shagger throwing NI off the bus and putting a border down the Irish Sea.
It's also potentially seriously bad news for Ireland if they can't export unfrozen processed meat to the UK. EU rules don't allow importation of same, so UK has said "we're applying the same rules" (that's called "retaliation" by Tony Connelly).
Most probably a poor deal, eclipsed by the illusion of a last minute brinkmanship "victory" against the odds.
If there's a deal Hardcore Remainers will say it's a poor deal, a cave, a capitulation, a victory for the EU etc. Hardcore Leavers will call it a travesty, an outrage and a surrender.
Mild Leavers will point out the advantages, wins and the freedoms, and what was gained through hard negotiations with the EU - including where they traded. Mild Remainers will say that it's "thin" and unambitious and loses many existing advantages but be grateful there's a deal at all - and will try and build on it in future.
The latter two will get totally crowded out by the noise on social and mainstream media of the former two.
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Thanks to TV Presenters who don't think the rules apply to them. 😉
Don't provoke me or you'll get some lacerating Obiter Dicta.
You need to catch up with the times and update your lingo, don't you know what 😉 means?
PS still waiting for some alleged hypocrisy between what I said then and what I am saying now, since there's no change.
This is why we should wait for the full text. I'd be astonished if British (and Irish) sausages for that matter weren't freely traded through our islands.
It may depend or be linked to a clause in the full FTA though.
I'd be pretty surprised if Ireland and NI weren't largely self sufficient on the sausage, mince and pie front.
Perhaps, but this isn't about adequacy of basic supply - it's about choice. And many people in NI will want to buy British products just as people here like to buy Irish as well.
Bit late for the DUP (eg) to worry about that, I'd think. Pork and sausage products etc are v. sensitive biosecurity wise - swine flu, foot'n'mouth. Indeed it was the UK who demanded severe measures on things like using them in animal feed, as pointed out here the other day.
Yes, but I think both Ireland and the UK (through the EU) will agree something here.
We all do a British Isles thang when it comes to farmers products, just as we do on the common travel area and being outside Schengen.
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Bullshit. London has huge hospital capacity and that's what the whole scare is about supposedly. Even lockdown didn't make much difference in London, the baseline level of activity is simply too high and only a speedy vaccine rollout will have an effect.
Once again the defensive use of limited vaccine quantities on the immobile old means we will have to be in lockdown for significantly longer than if we used it to target likely susperspreaders by vocation/age.
Care homes are not immobile, they are highly mobile and the biggest source of superspreader hospitalisations in the country by far.
Since your first paragraph is right (it is about hospitalisation capacity which is why there's no need for Tier 3), tackling care homes first means Tier 3 rapidly shouldn't be needed anywhere.
You will be no OJ fan but imo this here is an excellent summary from him of why we are where are on Brexit. You have to read the (short) piece not just the headline -
I agree with much of that. Not something I often say about about an Owen Jones article!
It's a good summary, I thought. Jones is very partisan, of course, but he is often astute on how the politics of things works, the different agendas etc.
Understates Corbyn’s baleful role, but yes, otherwise, pretty much spot on.
But he faces up to Corbyn's debits way more than most other figures on the Left. Same in his book, This Land, which I've just finished. I really like and respect Owen.
Given the hounding politicians get by the press for doing the same thing, no.
You are being inconsistent. You believe Burley should be sacked, as do I. You do not believe Cummings and Jenrick should have been sacked. In fact you believe they were unfairly hounded. I say sack the lot of them.
Where did I say they shouldn't be sacked? I thought Cummings should have gone straight away.
OK, fair enough. Johnson disagreed with you, unfortunately.
And that's got nowt to do with the reaction of the media, a subset of which have turned out to be hypocrites.
Thought you Guido and Phil were in favour of the one rule for us as espoused by the PM since the Summer?
Maybe I missed your criticism otherwise you should look closer to home for hypocrisy
How will history judge Osborne? He told Cameron he was crazy to plan to hold a referendum. But should he have done more to stop it? Resigned?
Making local councils in the North of England bear the brunt of austerity didn't help Remain's cause.
Citation needed. And a massive non-sequitur to boot.
This paper showing a causal relationship between austerity and the Brexit vote was published in the American Economic Review (one of the top journals in Economics, they only publish the best and most careful research).
Secondly, there were plenty of holes in that paper. The author himself helpfully lists some of them and tries (unconvincingly in my view) to respond to them here:
Item 2, for example, is, despite his attempt at rebuttal, clearly evidence against his proposition.
He ends up hand-waving: "The referendum was won because Leave swayed a non-negligible share of working-age adults into backing it. Many of these groups have been directly and indirectly affected by austerity. If I were to put a figure on the size of the groups, I would estimate that around 35 percentage points of the 52 percentage point Leave support is due to life-long Brexiteers. Out of the rest (17 percentage points), I estimate that between 6-11 percentage points of the Leave vote were due to austerity-induced protest voting."
Protest voting? Yes, sure. It was one of the more disgraceful aspects of the referendum that some influential Labour activists deliberately used the argument that a vote for Leave would 'give Cameron a bloody nose'. But austerity-induced protest voting? How the hell does he know? He hasn't actually found any evidence to support that as the motivation, just correlation. And correlation is not causation.
(And any paper which uses the term 'austerity' is suspect anyway - it's ill-defined and politically loaded. Austerity compared with what counterfactual? That the government continued indefinitely spending four pounds for every three raised in tax, as Darling was doing? In fact public spending continued to increase under Osborne, so I'm not sure what this 'austerity' was supposed to be).
The referendum was won because Leave swayed a non-negligible share of working-age adults into backing it
Wow. And the author gets paid to write this analysis.
Most probably a poor deal, eclipsed by the illusion of a last minute brinkmanship "victory" against the odds.
If there's a deal Hardcore Remainers will say it's a poor deal, a cave, a capitulation, a victory for the EU etc. Hardcore Leavers will call it a travesty, an outrage and a surrender.
Mild Leavers will point out the advantages, wins and the freedoms, and what was gained through hard negotiations with the EU - including where they traded. Mild Remainers will say that it's "thin" and unambitious and loses many existing advantages but be grateful there's a deal at all - and will try and build on it in future.
The latter two will get totally crowded out by the noise on social and mainstream media of the former two.
Most people will say ‘thank god for that’ forget about it until something happens to make them think about it. I doubt many people have a clue what’s going to happen, success will be measured by disruption levels trying to segment people into small groups is unreal, we have those that think they know what’s happening and those who don’t (95%) of the population.
Most people just want it over I think. Quite a few are a bit stressed about it.
Some good news regardless of "No Deal" the UK has, I think, now successfully replicated or bettered all its existing trade deals by the 31st December deadline except those for Albania, Algeria, Bosnia, Ghana, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia. That really is small beer except for Turkey and Mexico.
Deeper deals with New Zealand, Australia, Canada and TTP coming next year (Turkey will just be late) together with others like India, Bangladesh and Mercosur.
It's only the EU, and to a far lesser extent the US, we've had challenges with so far.
Given the hounding politicians get by the press for doing the same thing, no.
You are being inconsistent. You believe Burley should be sacked, as do I. You do not believe Cummings and Jenrick should have been sacked. In fact you believe they were unfairly hounded. I say sack the lot of them.
Where did I say they shouldn't be sacked? I thought Cummings should have gone straight away.
OK, fair enough. Johnson disagreed with you, unfortunately.
And that's got nowt to do with the reaction of the media, a subset of which have turned out to be hypocrites.
Thought you Guido and Phil were in favour of the one rule for us as espoused by the PM since the Summer?
Maybe I missed your criticism otherwise you should look closer to home for hypocrisy
Feel free to go back and check. And what have Guido and Phil got to do with my own opinions?
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Thanks to TV Presenters who don't think the rules apply to them. 😉
I can't imagine anyone in the whole country will follow the rules now that Kay Burley has broken them. We're all doomed...
Most probably a poor deal, eclipsed by the illusion of a last minute brinkmanship "victory" against the odds.
If there's a deal Hardcore Remainers will say it's a poor deal, a cave, a capitulation, a victory for the EU etc. Hardcore Leavers will call it a travesty, an outrage and a surrender.
Mild Leavers will point out the advantages, wins and the freedoms, and what was gained through hard negotiations with the EU - including where they traded. Mild Remainers will say that it's "thin" and unambitious and loses many existing advantages but be grateful there's a deal at all - and will try and build on it in future.
The latter two will get totally crowded out by the noise on social and mainstream media of the former two.
Most people will say ‘thank god for that’ forget about it until something happens to make them think about it. I doubt many people have a clue what’s going to happen, success will be measured by disruption levels trying to segment people into small groups is unreal, we have those that think they know what’s happening and those who don’t (95%) of the population.
Most people just want it over I think. Quite a few are a bit stressed about it.
Some good news regardless of "No Deal" the UK has, I think, now successfully replicated or bettered all its existing trade deals by the 31st December deadline except those for Albania, Algeria, Bosnia, Ghana, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia. That really is small beer except for Turkey and Mexico.
Deeper deals with New Zealand, Australia, Canada and TTP coming next year (Turkey will just be late) together with others like India, Bangladesh and Mercosur.
It's only the EU, and to a far lesser extent the US, we've had challenges with so far.
It's only with the EU (+EEA) that there will be a qualitative change in governance. Other FTAs are relatively easy to rollover.
Hard to describe how angry and pissed off with that idiot Swinney this household is tonight. Once again the EIS gets its way. Once again the total inadequacy of Scottish education is going to be hidden behind a wall of worthless A passes.
You’d almost think we had an election coming up. 🤔
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
Hard to describe how angry and pissed off with that idiot Swinney this household is tonight. Once again the EIS gets its way. Once again the total inadequacy of Scottish education is going to be hidden behind a wall of worthless A passes.
You’d almost think we had an election coming up. 🤔
Or you might think they were putting heavy pressure on the UK government to look weak, ineffectual and vacillating.
You will be no OJ fan but imo this here is an excellent summary from him of why we are where are on Brexit. You have to read the (short) piece not just the headline -
I agree with much of that. Not something I often say about about an Owen Jones article!
It's a good summary, I thought. Jones is very partisan, of course, but he is often astute on how the politics of things works, the different agendas etc.
Understates Corbyn’s baleful role, but yes, otherwise, pretty much spot on.
But he faces up to Corbyn's debits way more than most other figures on the Left. Same in his book, This Land, which I've just finished. I really like and respect Owen.
I read Chavs. It’s too long and flabby. If it had been edited down to its much tauter opening chapters on press hypocrisy and the Shannon Matthews case, it would have been among the all time great polemics.
Very worrying Channel 4 news report on Merthyr's Covid cases, where the NHS is at breaking point and close to having to have level 4 (disaster) declared.
And given that the rates have climbed very sharply recently, it is certain to get worse.
Hard to describe how angry and pissed off with that idiot Swinney this household is tonight. Once again the EIS gets its way. Once again the total inadequacy of Scottish education is going to be hidden behind a wall of worthless A passes.
You’d almost think we had an election coming up. 🤔
Or you might think they were putting heavy pressure on the UK government to look weak, ineffectual and vacillating.
7 of his year have got Oxford and Cambridge interviews this year. I am wondering if it’s too late for them to do A levels instead.
Most people just want it over I think. Quite a few are a bit stressed about it.
Some good news regardless of "No Deal" the UK has, I think, now successfully replicated or bettered all its existing trade deals by the 31st December deadline except those for Albania, Algeria, Bosnia, Ghana, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia. That really is small beer except for Turkey and Mexico.
Deeper deals with New Zealand, Australia, Canada and TTP coming next year (Turkey will just be late) together with others like India, Bangladesh and Mercosur.
It's only the EU, and to a far lesser extent the US, we've had challenges with so far.
The politics of this are working out well enough for the Prime Minister as they would for any politician with just a scintilla of intelligence.
He goes off to Brussels amidst much fanfare tomorrow and one of two things happens:
1) He comes back with a Deal which, irrespective of the actual content, is immediately hailed as a "triumph" by the acolytes in the media and on here. Together with the vaccine, it is portrayed as a "success" for Britain and the launch of a new positive feel-good "don't think about things too much, just have a good time" approach to 2021. By the way, at the elections in May, don't forget to thank the Party and Prime Minister who saved you from the virus.
2) There is no Deal - Boris comes back to the Commons and excoriates the Europeans in the Commons blaming them all for the failure and saying Britain "negotiated in good faith throughout and was wholly reasonable in all its requests". Once again, the truth be damned and his supporters will immediately wheel out generations of anti-European stereotyping and caricatures (French and cheese being a good example). Playing on all sorts of cultural memes, the Prime Minister will wrap himself in the Union Jack and will invoke all sorts of ludicrous wartime hyperbole to mask him and his Government's abject failure. By the way, at the elections in May, don't forget to vote for the Party and Prime Minister who stood up to the duplicitous Europeans.
That's how it is if you have enough powerful unthinking uncritical supporters - heads I win, tails I also win.
This is why we should wait for the full text. I'd be astonished if British (and Irish) sausages for that matter weren't freely traded through our islands.
It may depend or be linked to a clause in the full FTA though.
Northern Irish dog when asked what he would like to eat on 1 Jan 2021 (1 MIN 35 in.)
Most probably a poor deal, eclipsed by the illusion of a last minute brinkmanship "victory" against the odds.
If there's a deal Hardcore Remainers will say it's a poor deal, a cave, a capitulation, a victory for the EU etc. Hardcore Leavers will call it a travesty, an outrage and a surrender.
Mild Leavers will point out the advantages, wins and the freedoms, and what was gained through hard negotiations with the EU - including where they traded. Mild Remainers will say that it's "thin" and unambitious and loses many existing advantages but be grateful there's a deal at all - and will try and build on it in future.
The latter two will get totally crowded out by the noise on social and mainstream media of the former two.
Most people will say ‘thank god for that’ forget about it until something happens to make them think about it. I doubt many people have a clue what’s going to happen, success will be measured by disruption levels trying to segment people into small groups is unreal, we have those that think they know what’s happening and those who don’t (95%) of the population.
Most people just want it over I think. Quite a few are a bit stressed about it.
Some good news regardless of "No Deal" the UK has, I think, now successfully replicated or bettered all its existing trade deals by the 31st December deadline except those for Albania, Algeria, Bosnia, Ghana, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia. That really is small beer except for Turkey and Mexico.
Deeper deals with New Zealand, Australia, Canada and TTP coming next year (Turkey will just be late) together with others like India, Bangladesh and Mercosur.
It's only the EU, and to a far lesser extent the US, we've had challenges with so far.
Yes, Liz Truss has fixed our non-EU external trade arrangements which was a really big worry of mine. She's actually been one of the best ministers and so much better than Liam Fox.
Point of order, we won't ever get a free trade deal with Turkey as it sits in a customs union with the EU and is unable to strike independent trade deals. Whatever our eventual free trade deal with the EU will extend to our exports to Turkey but our WTO import tarrifs will always apply to Turkish goods. It's why the customs union deal with the EU is really the worst of all worlds as you essentially cut off 85% of world GDP and trade for exports but don't get use tariffs to protect domestic industries where the EU has tariff elimination trade deals (Canada, Korea, Japan, probably the UK).
I'm actually surprised that Erdogan hasn't taken aim at this situation but I guess Turkey has got huge economic worries so it could end up being a distraction from the unemployment issues.
Hard to describe how angry and pissed off with that idiot Swinney this household is tonight. Once again the EIS gets its way. Once again the total inadequacy of Scottish education is going to be hidden behind a wall of worthless A passes.
You’d almost think we had an election coming up. 🤔
Or you might think they were putting heavy pressure on the UK government to look weak, ineffectual and vacillating.
7 of his year have got Oxford and Cambridge interviews this year. I am wondering if it’s too late for them to do A levels instead.
I would say yes, given how different they are. But it isn’t too late for universities to set their own exams, although how they would be run and paid for is another question.
This announcement also removes any realistic doubts about GCSEs. They will be cancelled, the question is when.
I am still hoping we can salvage A-levels, although that requires a degree of flexibility and intelligence altogether lacking in the people administering them.
What I would add - from your point of view - is that Swinney is being a total moron not to come up with a programme of rolling assessment instead, relying on exactly the same system that he messed up with so spectacularly last time. That could have been forgivable as a late call and an experiment, but doing it twice when we’ve seen what a mess it is should be enough to cause every SNP MSP to forfeit their seats as unfit for government,
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
Yes, I see what you mean. That's a good point. The EU "loss of sovereignty" gripe (apart from the visceral FOM thing) is quite ivory tower and wonky.
I think the Nation State is important but I also think some fetishize it and with this can come many things that are best kept in their box.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
I remember watching an interview with a Taliban fighter, and he said he was fighting to keep Aghani culture and stop his daughters seeing Disney movies.
Very worrying Channel 4 news report on Merthyr's Covid cases, where the NHS is at breaking point and close to having to have level 4 (disaster) declared.
And given that the rates have climbed very sharply recently, it is certain to get worse.
But they won't take any further action until after Christmas and hall pass scheme still on... absolute madness.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
I remember watching an interview with a Taliban fighter, and he said he was fighting to keep Aghani culture and stop his daughters seeing Disney movies.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
I remember watching an interview with a Taliban fighter, and he said he was fighting to keep Aghani culture and stop his daughters seeing Disney movies.
America is the global cultural hegemon. It isn't just capitalism or we'd all be embracing the latest chinese fads. That frustrates me because a lot of exported US culture is just... arse. It's like if Scotland were the global hegemon and everyone ate MacDougal's stovies and shortbread from piper-clad tins. It isn't the actual culture of the US (for better or worse) but a plastic version of it that subsumes and swamps anything that might have connected meaning to the places it touches. There was a superb video essay on the Wisecrack YT channel about how Disney corrupts everything it touches as an example.
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Bullshit. London has huge hospital capacity and that's what the whole scare is about supposedly. Even lockdown didn't make much difference in London, the baseline level of activity is simply too high and only a speedy vaccine rollout will have an effect.
Once again the defensive use of limited vaccine quantities on the immobile old means we will have to be in lockdown for significantly longer than if we used it to target likely susperspreaders by vocation/age.
Are the PB Bumpkin London lockdown fetishists going to advocate the cessation of all tube services, bus services and flights?
Most people just want it over I think. Quite a few are a bit stressed about it.
Some good news regardless of "No Deal" the UK has, I think, now successfully replicated or bettered all its existing trade deals by the 31st December deadline except those for Albania, Algeria, Bosnia, Ghana, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia. That really is small beer except for Turkey and Mexico.
Deeper deals with New Zealand, Australia, Canada and TTP coming next year (Turkey will just be late) together with others like India, Bangladesh and Mercosur.
It's only the EU, and to a far lesser extent the US, we've had challenges with so far.
The politics of this are working out well enough for the Prime Minister as they would for any politician with just a scintilla of intelligence.
He goes off to Brussels amidst much fanfare tomorrow and one of two things happens:
1) He comes back with a Deal which, irrespective of the actual content, is immediately hailed as a "triumph" by the acolytes in the media and on here. Together with the vaccine, it is portrayed as a "success" for Britain and the launch of a new positive feel-good "don't think about things too much, just have a good time" approach to 2021. By the way, at the elections in May, don't forget to thank the Party and Prime Minister who saved you from the virus.
2) There is no Deal - Boris comes back to the Commons and excoriates the Europeans in the Commons blaming them all for the failure and saying Britain "negotiated in good faith throughout and was wholly reasonable in all its requests". Once again, the truth be damned and his supporters will immediately wheel out generations of anti-European stereotyping and caricatures (French and cheese being a good example). Playing on all sorts of cultural memes, the Prime Minister will wrap himself in the Union Jack and will invoke all sorts of ludicrous wartime hyperbole to mask him and his Government's abject failure. By the way, at the elections in May, don't forget to vote for the Party and Prime Minister who stood up to the duplicitous Europeans.
That's how it is if you have enough powerful unthinking uncritical supporters - heads I win, tails I also win.
Of course the same is true in reverse. Many will be unthinkingly critical no matter what.
I suspect there are more people on this site who will be unthinkingly critical than will be unthinkingly positive - HY may be the only one of the latter on this site.
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Bullshit. London has huge hospital capacity and that's what the whole scare is about supposedly. Even lockdown didn't make much difference in London, the baseline level of activity is simply too high and only a speedy vaccine rollout will have an effect.
Once again the defensive use of limited vaccine quantities on the immobile old means we will have to be in lockdown for significantly longer than if we used it to target likely susperspreaders by vocation/age.
Are the PB Bumpkin London lockdown fetishists going to advocate the cessation of all tube services, bus services and flights?
Are the PB Londoners who never raised any concern about the fate of the north for the last few months going to demand London is treated differently under the same circumstances ?
Very worrying Channel 4 news report on Merthyr's Covid cases, where the NHS is at breaking point and close to having to have level 4 (disaster) declared.
And given that the rates have climbed very sharply recently, it is certain to get worse.
The public have given up on social distancing in most of South East and South West Wales. Although mask wearing still pretty good, older 'boyo' type men tend to wear the mask only over the mouth not nose. At least 50% non-participation at Marks in Culverhouse Cross this evening for use of mandatory anti- bacterial gel. On questioning the guard on the door as to why he allowed non-compliance, he replied that when challenged punters are getting quite lairy. (This is Marks, not B and M Bargains!) He said he isn't paid enough to get punched.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
I remember watching an interview with a Taliban fighter, and he said he was fighting to keep Aghani culture and stop his daughters seeing Disney movies.
Sounds like a Belle end to me.
He needs to be Frozen out. His Herbie has gone bananas.
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Bullshit. London has huge hospital capacity and that's what the whole scare is about supposedly. Even lockdown didn't make much difference in London, the baseline level of activity is simply too high and only a speedy vaccine rollout will have an effect.
Once again the defensive use of limited vaccine quantities on the immobile old means we will have to be in lockdown for significantly longer than if we used it to target likely susperspreaders by vocation/age.
Are the PB Bumpkin London lockdown fetishists going to advocate the cessation of all tube services, bus services and flights?
Are the PB Londoners who never raised any concern about the fate of the north for the last few months going to demand London is treated differently under the same circumstances ?
The Harrying Of The North nor the effective cancellation of HS2 oop North doesn't happen in the eyes of Londoners.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
I remember watching an interview with a Taliban fighter, and he said he was fighting to keep Aghani culture and stop his daughters seeing Disney movies.
Sounds like a Belle end to me.
He needs to be Frozen out. His Herbie has gone bananas.
It is a Tangled mess, they always want to look back rather than move Onwards.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
I remember watching an interview with a Taliban fighter, and he said he was fighting to keep Aghani culture and stop his daughters seeing Disney movies.
America is the global cultural hegemon. It isn't just capitalism or we'd all be embracing the latest chinese fads. That frustrates me because a lot of exported US culture is just... arse. It's like if Scotland were the global hegemon and everyone ate MacDougal's stovies and shortbread from piper-clad tins. It isn't the actual culture of the US (for better or worse) but a plastic version of it that subsumes and swamps anything that might have connected meaning to the places it touches. There was a superb video essay on the Wisecrack YT channel about how Disney corrupts everything it touches as an example.
I think Disney makes a lot of very good family friendly entertainment, to be honest. Especially but not only its Pixar division. The persistent high quality of their output is striking, in fact. There's a reason why they are a cultural hegemon.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
I remember watching an interview with a Taliban fighter, and he said he was fighting to keep Aghani culture and stop his daughters seeing Disney movies.
Sounds like a Belle end to me.
He needs to be Frozen out. His Herbie has gone bananas.
It is a Tangled mess, they always want to look back rather than move Onwards.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
I remember watching an interview with a Taliban fighter, and he said he was fighting to keep Aghani culture and stop his daughters seeing Disney movies.
Sounds like an overprotective father, just like Triton in the Little Mermaid.
Of course the same is true in reverse. Many will be unthinkingly critical no matter what.
I suspect there are more people on this site who will be unthinkingly critical than will be unthinkingly positive - HY may be the only one of the latter on this site.
Those voices won't be as strongly heard, I think, in the short term.
I'm no friend of the Government but I'd like to see the totality of the Deal (if there is one) before passing judgement.
Nor do I think it's about "surrendering" or "giving in" - this isn't Versailles in 1919. The UK will get some things it wants and have to accept some things it doesn't, for the EU it is exactly the same. The new economic relationship won't be wholly advantageous to one side or the other.
The problem is it is being used to define our relationship to Europe when it is only one aspect and that definition is being based on clapped-out clichés, stereotypes and insinuations.
Europe will still be there when all this is over and we will need to find a modus vivendi with the EU. We also need to have that debate about our own place in the world we've avoided since the Referendum. Are we globalists or do we want to be more insular - obviously, it's far from being that simple but we need to start somewhere.
One day the DUP is going to realise that the Johnson government holds it in total contempt and sees its MPs as nothing more than useful idiots. It would take a heart of stone not to feel a tinge of pity for these Trump-loving fundamentalists. I guess that's what I have.
I dispute the the word useful being needed to describe the DUP. Useless tossers might be more accurate.
Most probably a poor deal, eclipsed by the illusion of a last minute brinkmanship "victory" against the odds.
If there's a deal Hardcore Remainers will say it's a poor deal, a cave, a capitulation, a victory for the EU etc. Hardcore Leavers will call it a travesty, an outrage and a surrender.
Mild Leavers will point out the advantages, wins and the freedoms, and what was gained through hard negotiations with the EU - including where they traded. Mild Remainers will say that it's "thin" and unambitious and loses many existing advantages but be grateful there's a deal at all - and will try and build on it in future.
The latter two will get totally crowded out by the noise on social and mainstream media of the former two.
Most people will say ‘thank god for that’ forget about it until something happens to make them think about it. I doubt many people have a clue what’s going to happen, success will be measured by disruption levels trying to segment people into small groups is unreal, we have those that think they know what’s happening and those who don’t (95%) of the population.
Most people just want it over I think. Quite a few are a bit stressed about it.
Some good news regardless of "No Deal" the UK has, I think, now successfully replicated or bettered all its existing trade deals by the 31st December deadline except those for Albania, Algeria, Bosnia, Ghana, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia. That really is small beer except for Turkey and Mexico.
Deeper deals with New Zealand, Australia, Canada and TTP coming next year (Turkey will just be late) together with others like India, Bangladesh and Mercosur.
It's only the EU, and to a far lesser extent the US, we've had challenges with so far.
Yes, Liz Truss has fixed our non-EU external trade arrangements which was a really big worry of mine. She's actually been one of the best ministers and so much better than Liam Fox.
Point of order, we won't ever get a free trade deal with Turkey as it sits in a customs union with the EU and is unable to strike independent trade deals. Whatever our eventual free trade deal with the EU will extend to our exports to Turkey but our WTO import tarrifs will always apply to Turkish goods. It's why the customs union deal with the EU is really the worst of all worlds as you essentially cut off 85% of world GDP and trade for exports but don't get use tariffs to protect domestic industries where the EU has tariff elimination trade deals (Canada, Korea, Japan, probably the UK).
I'm actually surprised that Erdogan hasn't taken aim at this situation but I guess Turkey has got huge economic worries so it could end up being a distraction from the unemployment issues.
Very worrying Channel 4 news report on Merthyr's Covid cases, where the NHS is at breaking point and close to having to have level 4 (disaster) declared.
And given that the rates have climbed very sharply recently, it is certain to get worse.
The public have given up on social distancing in most of South East and South West Wales. Although mask wearing still pretty good, older 'boyo' type men tend to wear the mask only over the mouth not nose. At least 50% non-participation at Marks in Culverhouse Cross this evening for use of mandatory anti- bacterial gel. On questioning the guard on the door as to why he allowed non-compliance, he replied that when challenged punters are getting quite lairy. (This is Marks, not B and M Bargains!) He said he isn't paid enough to get punched.
It's B & M or Home Bargains. Or was that a deliberate mistake to fool us you don't use them?
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
To try a different and maybe interesting question.
At what point in EU integration will the Austrian State Treaty be violated -
1) Already is? 2) Will be in 10 years? 3) ?
Wasn’t it superseded in 1990 when Germany reunified?
Nope. The 1990 Treaty basically had Germany saying we are cool with that and existing borders.
You could make a case that the EU is currently in breach of... drum roll... international law...
You're not a Leaver, are you?
I voted Remain - but for pragmatic rather than ideological reasons.
My point about the Austrian State Treaty is that when someone breaks a treaty, either...
- It is an appalling stain on that country - It is just how we roll
Depending on who's benefit it is for, mainly.
I still remember the pearl clutching about the abrogation of the ABM treaty....
London should be placed under the tightest tier 3 coronavirus restrictions in the next 48 hours, a leading public health expert has warned, as data reveals cases are on the rise across much of the capital.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
Bullshit. London has huge hospital capacity and that's what the whole scare is about supposedly. Even lockdown didn't make much difference in London, the baseline level of activity is simply too high and only a speedy vaccine rollout will have an effect.
Once again the defensive use of limited vaccine quantities on the immobile old means we will have to be in lockdown for significantly longer than if we used it to target likely susperspreaders by vocation/age.
Are the PB Bumpkin London lockdown fetishists going to advocate the cessation of all tube services, bus services and flights?
Are the PB Londoners who never raised any concern about the fate of the north for the last few months going to demand London is treated differently under the same circumstances ?
What PB Londoners? There's only about 3 of us. Mostly a Home Counties crowd on here I think.
I can't believe, even in all their crass incompetence, that the UK government would allow negotiations to continue after christmas, and then leap to the exit, with no further business preparation.
You'd have to imagine the options are some sort of fudged deal this week, or a scenario where the deal is finalised as late as the end of the month, and then even longer is extended and added on for businesses and infrastructure on both sides to prepare.
It means there is going to either be a deal or some form of extension. It could be agreeing no deal at a subsequent date rather than 1 January, but kinabalu is correct, we wont be no dealing on 1 January.
Too many people are off in the xmas-new year week for it to make any sense whatsoever.
If you're going to have no deal then maybe doing that on a day most people are off would be sensible.
Major disruptions like this normally occur during market closures for a reason.
So the week we are ramping up are vaccination efforts for the biggest and most important logistical challenge since the WW2 is a sensible time to create logistical havoc on the country? Get a grip, its just theatre, there is zero chance they will implement no deal now. Very likely we will sign up to whatever we are told to, getting a small win on fish and a future review date to diverge. If not it will be a delayed no deal, with the govt getting out of any political jam with the headbangers by blaming covid and reminding them they will be getting their precious no deal at a later date.
Yes. But it will be enough to convince Philip that we have won and did indeed have all the cards.
Absolutely. He has an unusual absolutist sovereignty view of the world which logically was met with actual Brexit which has already happened. Whatever deal is now made is simply a recognition of Westminster sovereignty so will be a win.
Well yes, unless like May's deal we are bound to implement EU laws without a say in them.
Its a very simple line in the sand for me and "should" be relatively easy to clear. May's deal failed to clear it. Boris's deal should. But I've put my line in the sand out there in advance - the UK should determine UK laws - anything the UK agrees to internationally is still the UK determining it, so long as the UK retains the right to diverge from that in the future and it can't be changed without the UK's consent.
Yes but......Brexit has definitively proven we always had the right to diverge from the EU when we wanted to. It was not necessary to leave in order to find out we could. We simply made a set of agreements with other countries to mutual benefits.
I never said it was necessary to leave the EU though did I?
You continually assert we cannot let other bodies determine UK laws because of sovereignty.
Ultimately the UK can determine its own laws if it really needs to. In an inter connected world it makes sense for countries to pool together sovereignty, on loan if you like, to make trade easier, for defence and to protect the environment.
We will do so whether we are in the EU or not, it is just a matter of degree as to how much sovereignty we pool and loan out, the absolutist sovereignty view you have just doesn't reflect the real world. It is meaningless as the UK is and was sovereign.
This is clearly not the case. If, as a country, laws can be made over which you have no control and which you cannot legally refuse to abide by then, for as long as that remains the case, you are clearly not sovereign.
As long as a veto existed it could reasonably be argued that the nations of Europe were sovereign. Once that veto was removed that situation changed.
That's an extremely rigid and absolutist view of what sovereignty is in today's world. It means France is not iyo a sovereign nation. Most people there would disagree, I'm sure. They'd say that EU membership does not strip them of sovereignty because it is conditional on their democratically elected government considering it to be in their national interest and thus choosing to partake. I think this view is the better one.
Nope you can't just change the meaning of words to suit your own view. To be sovereign as a state is to exercise supreme, permanent authority within one's borders. Now you may feel that that is not necessary, desirable or important but what you can't do is try to claim that it is still sovereignty when clearly it is not.
The idiotic claim made by some on here that we were still sovereign because we could regain that supreme authority by leaving is also garbage. Sovereignty is a state of being not a potential. One can lose sovereignty and then regain it again but as long as another authority is able to make laws within your country over which you have no control or veto then you are not a sovereign state.
Scotland is a good example. They have the potential to leave the UK but no one in their right minds would claim that as long as they remain within the UK that potential alone makes them a sovereign state. It does not.
That's simply a restatement of the same narrow and absolutist view. It means France is not a sovereign nation. An ostensibly absurd conclusion like that requires more than I'm seeing from you - or tbf anyone on here - to support it.
Nope. As I say you may not like the concept of sovereignty, that is entirely your choice, but it is not for you or anyone else to redefine it to pretend it still exists. No France is not Sovereign. Nor is any other country in the EU as long as they can have laws imposed on them against their will. It is kind of fundamental to the basic definition of autonomous supreme authority. I would have far more respect for you if you were to argue that it doesn't matter if a state is sovereign but pretending it is against the basic definition of the term is rather sad.
It most certainly is for me for define and interpret what sovereignty means in a way which makes sense to me in the world I live in. And when my take on it happens to align with how the vast majority of informed and intelligent people understand it, this encourages me to stick with it. You are perfectly free to stick with your narrow/purist (delete to taste) view. I think if you make a sovereign decision to pool some of your sovereignty in a supranational organization (which you can choose to leave at any time) because you consider it in your sovereign national interest, that is NOT to cease to be a sovereign nation. If this view loses me some respect from somebody who has what I consider to be a ladybird book understanding of these matters, I can live with that.
I don't have an issue with pooled sovereignty either, and I don't think it undermines national identity or culture.
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
I remember watching an interview with a Taliban fighter, and he said he was fighting to keep Aghani culture and stop his daughters seeing Disney movies.
America is the global cultural hegemon. It isn't just capitalism or we'd all be embracing the latest chinese fads. That frustrates me because a lot of exported US culture is just... arse. It's like if Scotland were the global hegemon and everyone ate MacDougal's stovies and shortbread from piper-clad tins. It isn't the actual culture of the US (for better or worse) but a plastic version of it that subsumes and swamps anything that might have connected meaning to the places it touches. There was a superb video essay on the Wisecrack YT channel about how Disney corrupts everything it touches as an example.
I think Disney makes a lot of very good family friendly entertainment, to be honest. Especially but not only its Pixar division. The persistent high quality of their output is striking, in fact. There's a reason why they are a cultural hegemon.
Completely agreed. Very respectful too and change with the times, the modern princesses are very good role models.
So these colleagues Kay B shared a table with. They all live in the same household do they?
Sky need to sack the lot of them.
They sat on the roof terrace of the restaurant where the rule of six applies outdoors. However, I hear that Kay then invited four people back to her house to continue the celebrations, which does breach the rules.
Comments
Most probably a poor deal, eclipsed by the illusion of a last minute brinkmanship "victory" against the odds.
Mild Leavers will point out the advantages, wins and the freedoms, and what was gained through hard negotiations with the EU - including where they traded. Mild Remainers will say that it's "thin" and unambitious and loses many existing advantages but be grateful there's a deal at all - and will try and build on it in future.
The latter two will get totally crowded out by the noise on social and mainstream media of the former two.
https://www.democracydocket.com/ is a great site for an overview of outstanding cases. Currently 39 active cases left, that number should tick down now over next few days as they get dismissed and the litigants won't be able to file new ones to replace them.
Five or six days to go until settlement probably.
Don't forget if Starmer whips the Parliamentary Labour Party then Johnson can offer a free Tory vote, making the deal a disastrous Labour construct.
Four more years!
https://twitter.com/MediaGuido/status/1336376499197370371?s=19
This is why we should wait for the full text. I'd be astonished if British (and Irish) sausages for that matter weren't freely traded through our islands.
It may depend or be linked to a clause in the full FTA though.
Figures from Public Health England (PHE) have revealed that between 26 November 2020 and 2 December – the last week of lockdown – 15,200 people tested positive in London, equating to a rate of 170 cases per 100,000 population. That is a rise from 156 cases per 100,000the week before, with PHE noting the seven-day case rate for London increased over five consecutive days.
In some parts of London, which is currently in tier 2, the latest figures show the rate was even higher, reaching 299 per 100,000 population in Barking and Dagenham and 319 in Havering, with a total of 20 of the 32 boroughs exceeding the average figure for England of 149 cases per 100,000
It's certainly what we are doing.
Once again the defensive use of limited vaccine quantities on the immobile old means we will have to be in lockdown for significantly longer than if we used it to target likely susperspreaders by vocation/age.
Then again, the obvious fudge is to agree it for now, and limit its scope, and cross that bridge if and when we come to it.
https://institute.global/sites/default/files/inline-files/Tony Blair Institute, Unpacking the Brexit Deal, November 2020 FINAL_0.pdf
https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1336375310720380929?s=20
This is one of the wins that the UK government pushed for - no longer bound by EU standards and dictats. Compounded by Shagger throwing NI off the bus and putting a border down the Irish Sea.
Secondly, there were plenty of holes in that paper. The author himself helpfully lists some of them and tries (unconvincingly in my view) to respond to them here:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/10/17/long-read-debunking-myths-on-links-between-austerity-and-brexit/
Item 2, for example, is, despite his attempt at rebuttal, clearly evidence against his proposition.
He ends up hand-waving: "The referendum was won because Leave swayed a non-negligible share of working-age adults into backing it. Many of these groups have been directly and indirectly affected by austerity. If I were to put a figure on the size of the groups, I would estimate that around 35 percentage points of the 52 percentage point Leave support is due to life-long Brexiteers. Out of the rest (17 percentage points), I estimate that between 6-11 percentage points of the Leave vote were due to austerity-induced protest voting."
Protest voting? Yes, sure. It was one of the more disgraceful aspects of the referendum that some influential Labour activists deliberately used the argument that a vote for Leave would 'give Cameron a bloody nose'. But austerity-induced protest voting? How the hell does he know? He hasn't actually found any evidence to support that as the motivation, just correlation. And correlation is not causation.
(And any paper which uses the term 'austerity' is suspect anyway - it's ill-defined and politically loaded. Austerity compared with what counterfactual? That the government continued indefinitely spending four pounds for every three raised in tax, as Darling was doing? In fact public spending continued to increase under Osborne, so I'm not sure what this 'austerity' was supposed to be).
PS still waiting for some alleged hypocrisy between what I said then and what I am saying now, since there's no change.
We all do a British Isles thang when it comes to farmers products, just as we do on the common travel area and being outside Schengen.
Since your first paragraph is right (it is about hospitalisation capacity which is why there's no need for Tier 3), tackling care homes first means Tier 3 rapidly shouldn't be needed anywhere.
Maybe I missed your criticism otherwise you should look closer to home for hypocrisy
Wow. And the author gets paid to write this analysis.
Some good news regardless of "No Deal" the UK has, I think, now successfully replicated or bettered all its existing trade deals by the 31st December deadline except those for Albania, Algeria, Bosnia, Ghana, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia. That really is small beer except for Turkey and Mexico.
Deeper deals with New Zealand, Australia, Canada and TTP coming next year (Turkey will just be late) together with others like India, Bangladesh and Mercosur.
It's only the EU, and to a far lesser extent the US, we've had challenges with so far.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/08/body-language-expert-gives-her-verdict-on-matt-hancocks-crocodile-tears-13718879/
You’d almost think we had an election coming up. 🤔
I'd go further. It strikes me that the biggest threat to national identity and culture has never come from the EU. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the UK and all the others are still strongly identifiable as nations with clear identities and cultures, and the EU has had a miniscule effect on this.
I'd ague that it's global capitalism that is a bigger threat to national identity and culture, as this has led to much more homogenisation of culture and 'sameness' than the EU ever has. It's McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Apple, Amazon, KFC, Microsoft, Google, Zara, Sony and so on that have led to replication of cultures across the globe, especially in the large cities, which have struggled to retain a 'local' feel because of the dominance of the huge multinationals. These are much more influential than a bit of sovereignty shared because of the EU.
And given that the rates have climbed very sharply recently, it is certain to get worse.
He goes off to Brussels amidst much fanfare tomorrow and one of two things happens:
1) He comes back with a Deal which, irrespective of the actual content, is immediately hailed as a "triumph" by the acolytes in the media and on here. Together with the vaccine, it is portrayed as a "success" for Britain and the launch of a new positive feel-good "don't think about things too much, just have a good time" approach to 2021. By the way, at the elections in May, don't forget to thank the Party and Prime Minister who saved you from the virus.
2) There is no Deal - Boris comes back to the Commons and excoriates the Europeans in the Commons blaming them all for the failure and saying Britain "negotiated in good faith throughout and was wholly reasonable in all its requests". Once again, the truth be damned and his supporters will immediately wheel out generations of anti-European stereotyping and caricatures (French and cheese being a good example). Playing on all sorts of cultural memes, the Prime Minister will wrap himself in the Union Jack and will invoke all sorts of ludicrous wartime hyperbole to mask him and his Government's abject failure. By the way, at the elections in May, don't forget to vote for the Party and Prime Minister who stood up to the duplicitous Europeans.
That's how it is if you have enough powerful unthinking uncritical supporters - heads I win, tails I also win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajsCY8SjJ1Y
Point of order, we won't ever get a free trade deal with Turkey as it sits in a customs union with the EU and is unable to strike independent trade deals. Whatever our eventual free trade deal with the EU will extend to our exports to Turkey but our WTO import tarrifs will always apply to Turkish goods. It's why the customs union deal with the EU is really the worst of all worlds as you essentially cut off 85% of world GDP and trade for exports but don't get use tariffs to protect domestic industries where the EU has tariff elimination trade deals (Canada, Korea, Japan, probably the UK).
I'm actually surprised that Erdogan hasn't taken aim at this situation but I guess Turkey has got huge economic worries so it could end up being a distraction from the unemployment issues.
This announcement also removes any realistic doubts about GCSEs. They will be cancelled, the question is when.
I am still hoping we can salvage A-levels, although that requires a degree of flexibility and intelligence altogether lacking in the people administering them.
What I would add - from your point of view - is that Swinney is being a total moron not to come up with a programme of rolling assessment instead, relying on exactly the same system that he messed up with so spectacularly last time. That could have been forgivable as a late call and an experiment, but doing it twice when we’ve seen what a mess it is should be enough to cause every SNP MSP to forfeit their seats as unfit for government,
I think the Nation State is important but I also think some fetishize it and with this can come many things that are best kept in their box.
Sky need to sack the lot of them.
I suspect there are more people on this site who will be unthinkingly critical than will be unthinkingly positive - HY may be the only one of the latter on this site.
Good night.
I'm no friend of the Government but I'd like to see the totality of the Deal (if there is one) before passing judgement.
Nor do I think it's about "surrendering" or "giving in" - this isn't Versailles in 1919. The UK will get some things it wants and have to accept some things it doesn't, for the EU it is exactly the same. The new economic relationship won't be wholly advantageous to one side or the other.
The problem is it is being used to define our relationship to Europe when it is only one aspect and that definition is being based on clapped-out clichés, stereotypes and insinuations.
Europe will still be there when all this is over and we will need to find a modus vivendi with the EU. We also need to have that debate about our own place in the world we've avoided since the Referendum. Are we globalists or do we want to be more insular - obviously, it's far from being that simple but we need to start somewhere.
We live within a country where I and my family have to have it, who else is important. Look after your own.
We are watching other people’s family get it, and they all look quite well!
My point about the Austrian State Treaty is that when someone breaks a treaty, either...
- It is an appalling stain on that country
- It is just how we roll
Depending on who's benefit it is for, mainly.
I still remember the pearl clutching about the abrogation of the ABM treaty....
Would you call for the head of a road safety correspondent who was caught speeding? The moralising tone on here is more nauseating than ever.