Now his fanbois cannot, will not, accept the reality he has wrought...
There were several opportunities to stop this, but Remain MPs gambled on overturning the vote they’d been elected to honour instead
I think you have just created an angle to wholly burden the uncharismatic and hapless Starmer, as Shadow Brexit Secretary, for the bus fire on the Shankhill Road. Well done!
Have a look at the salaries of Housing Association Chief Executives. Some of these earn three times the amount the Prime Minister gets, all for providing the service of Social Housing, for which there will always be a permanent demand in this Country.
In order for Boris Johnson to resolve any money troubles he might have, I am quite content for him to resign as Prime Minister and take a job as the Chief Executive of a Housing Association. One stone, so many birds!
Boris could even have chosen to make his career as a headmaster in a large state school and be earning more than he is as UK PM (albeit he would not get Chequers or No 10)
Ummmm...I don’t think he would have made it to Headmaster. Certainly in the state sector.
In fact he would have struggled to make it through his training year.
Although he could have been a civil servant, joined the DfE, and then gone on to be CEO of a MAT. They don’t have to be qualified teachers or, given my experience of some, have any brains at all.
Have a look at the salaries of Housing Association Chief Executives. Some of these earn three times the amount the Prime Minister gets, all for providing the service of Social Housing, for which there will always be a permanent demand in this Country.
In order for Boris Johnson to resolve any money troubles he might have, I am quite content for him to resign as Prime Minister and take a job as the Chief Executive of a Housing Association. One stone, so many birds!
Boris could even have chosen to make his career as a headmaster in a large state school and be earning more than he is as UK PM (albeit he would not get Chequers or No 10)
Ummmm...I don’t think he would have made it to Headmaster. Certainly in the state sector.
In fact he would have struggled to make it through his training year.
Although he could have been a civil servant, joined the DfE, and then gone on to be CEO of a MAT. They don’t have to be qualified teachers or, given my experience of some, have any brains at all.
For reasons of safeguarding, I am assuming a boys only school, staffed entirely by males.
PB continues to be obsessed with Scotland, while the PM's lies come home to roost in Northern Ireland.
We'll we're waiting for the Devil's Trifecta.
Indyref2, a border poll in NI, and I'm working out what the third one in this awful trifecta will be.
No 3. ART Davies becomes FM in Wales ensuring demands for Welsh Independence exceed 50% before the end of May.
If RT Davies becomes FM it will be because he is the most successful Welsh Tory leader ever and a humiliating result for Labour and Plaid, Wales voted for Brexit and it would cement Wales in Union with England even further.
It would also almost certainly require the Tories to be over 40% in Wales
That would indeed be true to just before the point where you write "cement Wales in Union with England even further". Do you think that blithering clown would do anything other than make the Conservatives unelectable in Wales for the remainder of the Millenium? And if Llafur are dead in the water, where does that lead us? PC!
If the Tories are over 40% (which they would need to be to form a deal with Abolish which is the only way RT becomes FM), then RT would likely scrap the Senedd anyway with Abolish and Wales would return to full union with England. RT would clearly not be unelectable in Wales, the opposite, he would be the most successful Tory leader in Wales ever if he got over 40%.
RT would get rewarded with a safe seat at Westminster then after
I would happily see the end of the Welsh Assembly and were I still residing there would vote for the Abolish the Welsh Assembly party on the List Vote.. However, I am not aware that the Assembly has the power to abolish itself. That would require primary legislation from Westminster which is unlikely to be forthcoming without a further Referendum to signify approval.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
The article link please so we can see the date and the full article as let's be honest you have a habit (to say the least) of misquoting
That is binding in international law. If you go to the WTO website as well they colour in NI as part of the UK in their maps. Yes we have a Protocol, yes we have laws, but internationally de jure Northern Ireland is part of our customs territory. Nothing has changed that, that is the last bit of law settled on that.
You might want to read Article 5 of that document in a lot more detail than you clearly have (not)..
The devil is in the detail and you haven't any clear of the detail...
Philip is seldom troubled by detail, or indeed facts.
At least I could recognise the fact that NI is part of the UK's customs territory. As explicitly recognised by international law with in the Withdrawal Agreement.
It seems others are more troubled by detail and facts than I am.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
The article link please so we can see the date and the full article as let's be honest you have a habit (to say the least) of misquoting
That is binding in international law. If you go to the WTO website as well they colour in NI as part of the UK in their maps. Yes we have a Protocol, yes we have laws, but internationally de jure Northern Ireland is part of our customs territory. Nothing has changed that, that is the last bit of law settled on that.
You might want to read Article 5 of that document in a lot more detail than you clearly have (not)..
The devil is in the detail and you haven't any clear of the detail...
None of Article 5 changes the fact that the NI is part of the UK's customs union.
Article 5 puts in place provisions that are currently in operation, which should be superseded by us invoking Article 16.
The fact that NI is part of our territory, combined with Article 16, squares the circle.
Um all of Article 5 changes the way NI is treated which is why as I said before I need to make a customs declaration to send a birthday present to NI.
Trying to correct your misunderstandings is like arguing with Ian Paisley but at least Ian Paisley gave an entertaining sermon if you went to his church.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
The article link please so we can see the date and the full article as let's be honest you have a habit (to say the least) of misquoting
That is binding in international law. If you go to the WTO website as well they colour in NI as part of the UK in their maps. Yes we have a Protocol, yes we have laws, but internationally de jure Northern Ireland is part of our customs territory. Nothing has changed that, that is the last bit of law settled on that.
You might want to read Article 5 of that document in a lot more detail than you clearly have (not)..
The devil is in the detail and you haven't any clear of the detail...
Philip is seldom troubled by detail, or indeed facts.
nor in fact reality or seemingly a job...
Mind you, I can't talk today with several unopened files on my desk.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
The article link please so we can see the date and the full article as let's be honest you have a habit (to say the least) of misquoting
That is binding in international law. If you go to the WTO website as well they colour in NI as part of the UK in their maps. Yes we have a Protocol, yes we have laws, but internationally de jure Northern Ireland is part of our customs territory. Nothing has changed that, that is the last bit of law settled on that.
You might want to read Article 5 of that document in a lot more detail than you clearly have (not)..
The devil is in the detail and you haven't any clear of the detail...
None of Article 5 changes the fact that the NI is part of the UK's customs union.
Article 5 puts in place provisions that are currently in operation, which should be superseded by us invoking Article 16.
The fact that NI is part of our territory, combined with Article 16, squares the circle.
Um all of Article 5 changes the way NI is treated which is why as I said before I need to make a customs declaration to send a birthday present to NI.
Trying to correct your misunderstandings is like arguing with Ian Paisley but at least Ian Paisley gave an entertaining sermon if you went to his church.
Yes Article 5 exists, it is the Protocol, I acknowledged that.
Have a look at the salaries of Housing Association Chief Executives. Some of these earn three times the amount the Prime Minister gets, all for providing the service of Social Housing, for which there will always be a permanent demand in this Country.
In order for Boris Johnson to resolve any money troubles he might have, I am quite content for him to resign as Prime Minister and take a job as the Chief Executive of a Housing Association. One stone, so many birds!
Boris could even have chosen to make his career as a headmaster in a large state school and be earning more than he is as UK PM (albeit he would not get Chequers or No 10)
Ummmm...I don’t think he would have made it to Headmaster. Certainly in the state sector.
In fact he would have struggled to make it through his training year.
Although he could have been a civil servant, joined the DfE, and then gone on to be CEO of a MAT. They don’t have to be qualified teachers or, given my experience of some, have any brains at all.
Well the headmaster of Eton also makes over £200,000 a year so more than he gets as PM too, if he only ever worked in independent schools and got to be head (you do not need QTS to work in private schools, a classics degree from Oxford will do)
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
The article link please so we can see the date and the full article as let's be honest you have a habit (to say the least) of misquoting
That is binding in international law. If you go to the WTO website as well they colour in NI as part of the UK in their maps. Yes we have a Protocol, yes we have laws, but internationally de jure Northern Ireland is part of our customs territory. Nothing has changed that, that is the last bit of law settled on that.
You might want to read Article 5 of that document in a lot more detail than you clearly have (not)..
The devil is in the detail and you haven't any clear of the detail...
Philip is seldom troubled by detail, or indeed facts.
nor in fact reality or seemingly a job...
Mind you, I can't talk today with several unopened files on my desk.
I’m taking a break to watch some cricket after smashing a large hole in a door.
No, I didn’t mistake it for Gavin Williamson, I’m fitting a new lock.
But I can’t do more until the actual lock arrives.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
The article link please so we can see the date and the full article as let's be honest you have a habit (to say the least) of misquoting
That is binding in international law. If you go to the WTO website as well they colour in NI as part of the UK in their maps. Yes we have a Protocol, yes we have laws, but internationally de jure Northern Ireland is part of our customs territory. Nothing has changed that, that is the last bit of law settled on that.
You might want to read Article 5 of that document in a lot more detail than you clearly have (not)..
The devil is in the detail and you haven't any clear of the detail...
Philip is seldom troubled by detail, or indeed facts.
At least I could recognise the fact that NI is part of the UK's customs territory. As explicitly recognised by international law with in the Withdrawal Agreement.
It seems others are more troubled by detail and facts than I am.
And in what parallel reality does paragraph 1 exist? Hint: one with no border in the North Channel!
Have a look at the salaries of Housing Association Chief Executives. Some of these earn three times the amount the Prime Minister gets, all for providing the service of Social Housing, for which there will always be a permanent demand in this Country.
In order for Boris Johnson to resolve any money troubles he might have, I am quite content for him to resign as Prime Minister and take a job as the Chief Executive of a Housing Association. One stone, so many birds!
Boris could even have chosen to make his career as a headmaster in a large state school and be earning more than he is as UK PM (albeit he would not get Chequers or No 10)
Ummmm...I don’t think he would have made it to Headmaster. Certainly in the state sector.
In fact he would have struggled to make it through his training year.
Although he could have been a civil servant, joined the DfE, and then gone on to be CEO of a MAT. They don’t have to be qualified teachers or, given my experience of some, have any brains at all.
Well the headmaster of Eton also makes over £200,000 a year so more than he gets as PM too, if he only ever worked in independent schools and got to be head (you do not need QTS to work in private schools, a classics degree from Oxford will do)
You don’t actually *need* QTS to work in most of the state sector, it’s just very unusual to get interviews if you don’t have it.
Leaving aside safeguarding, he simply doesn’t have the organisational or administrative skills to make it to the top in teaching. There is a reason why he succeeds brilliantly where campaigning is key and falls flat on his face in all his executive roles.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
The article link please so we can see the date and the full article as let's be honest you have a habit (to say the least) of misquoting
That is binding in international law. If you go to the WTO website as well they colour in NI as part of the UK in their maps. Yes we have a Protocol, yes we have laws, but internationally de jure Northern Ireland is part of our customs territory. Nothing has changed that, that is the last bit of law settled on that.
You might want to read Article 5 of that document in a lot more detail than you clearly have (not)..
The devil is in the detail and you haven't any clear of the detail...
Philip is seldom troubled by detail, or indeed facts.
At least I could recognise the fact that NI is part of the UK's customs territory. As explicitly recognised by international law with in the Withdrawal Agreement.
It seems others are more troubled by detail and facts than I am.
And in what parallel reality does paragraph 1 exist? Hint: one with no border in the North Channel!
It exists in this reality, it is part of the Treaty. You were wrong and I was right and the EU recognises that fact.
If we invoke Article 16 we can do whatever we need to "safeguard" the "societal difficulties that are liable to persist" "in order to remedy the situation".
Have a look at the salaries of Housing Association Chief Executives. Some of these earn three times the amount the Prime Minister gets, all for providing the service of Social Housing, for which there will always be a permanent demand in this Country.
In order for Boris Johnson to resolve any money troubles he might have, I am quite content for him to resign as Prime Minister and take a job as the Chief Executive of a Housing Association. One stone, so many birds!
Boris could even have chosen to make his career as a headmaster in a large state school and be earning more than he is as UK PM (albeit he would not get Chequers or No 10)
Ummmm...I don’t think he would have made it to Headmaster. Certainly in the state sector.
In fact he would have struggled to make it through his training year.
Although he could have been a civil servant, joined the DfE, and then gone on to be CEO of a MAT. They don’t have to be qualified teachers or, given my experience of some, have any brains at all.
Well the headmaster of Eton also makes over £200,000 a year so more than he gets as PM too, if he only ever worked in independent schools and got to be head (you do not need QTS to work in private schools, a classics degree from Oxford will do)
You don’t actually *need* QTS to work in most of the state sector, it’s just very unusual to get interviews if you don’t have it.
Leaving aside safeguarding, he simply doesn’t have the organisational or administrative skills to make it to the top in teaching. There is a reason why he succeeds brilliantly where campaigning is key and falls flat on his face in all his executive roles.
If he was not PM Boris would probably make the most money as a stand up comedian
Now his fanbois cannot, will not, accept the reality he has wrought...
There were several opportunities to stop this, but Remain MPs gambled on overturning the vote they’d been elected to honour instead
I think you have just created an angle to wholly burden the uncharismatic and hapless Starmer, as Shadow Brexit Secretary, for the bus fire on the Shankhill Road. Well done!
Haha no I was on this one whilst the deals were getting defeated in 2017/18!
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
The article link please so we can see the date and the full article as let's be honest you have a habit (to say the least) of misquoting
That is binding in international law. If you go to the WTO website as well they colour in NI as part of the UK in their maps. Yes we have a Protocol, yes we have laws, but internationally de jure Northern Ireland is part of our customs territory. Nothing has changed that, that is the last bit of law settled on that.
You might want to read Article 5 of that document in a lot more detail than you clearly have (not)..
The devil is in the detail and you haven't any clear of the detail...
Philip is seldom troubled by detail, or indeed facts.
nor in fact reality or seemingly a job...
Mind you, I can't talk today with several unopened files on my desk.
I’m taking a break to watch some cricket after smashing a large hole in a door.
No, I didn’t mistake it for Gavin Williamson, I’m fitting a new lock.
But I can’t do more until the actual lock arrives.
Well, that’s the excuse.
Nor can you leave the room / house (for security purposes) until the lock arrives so you have no choice but to watch the cricket
Have a look at the salaries of Housing Association Chief Executives. Some of these earn three times the amount the Prime Minister gets, all for providing the service of Social Housing, for which there will always be a permanent demand in this Country.
In order for Boris Johnson to resolve any money troubles he might have, I am quite content for him to resign as Prime Minister and take a job as the Chief Executive of a Housing Association. One stone, so many birds!
Boris could even have chosen to make his career as a headmaster in a large state school and be earning more than he is as UK PM (albeit he would not get Chequers or No 10)
Ummmm...I don’t think he would have made it to Headmaster. Certainly in the state sector.
In fact he would have struggled to make it through his training year.
Although he could have been a civil servant, joined the DfE, and then gone on to be CEO of a MAT. They don’t have to be qualified teachers or, given my experience of some, have any brains at all.
Well the headmaster of Eton also makes over £200,000 a year so more than he gets as PM too, if he only ever worked in independent schools and got to be head (you do not need QTS to work in private schools, a classics degree from Oxford will do)
You don’t actually *need* QTS to work in most of the state sector, it’s just very unusual to get interviews if you don’t have it.
Leaving aside safeguarding, he simply doesn’t have the organisational or administrative skills to make it to the top in teaching. There is a reason why he succeeds brilliantly where campaigning is key and falls flat on his face in all his executive roles.
If he was not PM Boris would probably make the most money as a stand up comedian
Well, I suppose given I compared teaching to doing stand up five times a day yesterday, I sort of asked for that.
I would say that his problem though is that he *is* a standup, pretending to be PM.
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
And yet such an easy solution eludes us - because it isn't based in reality. The bulk of Irish trade is food. We need to completely align our SPS standards with the EU and do a deal to remove the checks. Our standards ARE completely aligned, but apparently we can't agree a deal because at some point in the future the EU may increase their standards just to spite us.
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
We don't "need" to align our SPS with the EU.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc . That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
Mate, you keep dancing on this same pinhead. If our standards are "equivalent" then it means they are close enough to the required standard. Which they are now. And will be in the future as we declare that standards will only ever be increased. So we could do this as you suggest, but it is declaring that our standards will different *but directly comparable* to EU ones. Which you won't accept.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Yes we can. We can recognise our standards as currently equivalent but not commit to alignment, with a dispute system if divergence occurs in the future.
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We can do whatever we want - the issue is so can the EU and because we won't agree to the EU's terms the EU are imposing the WTO rules they impose on imports from all third party countries.
Indeed.
So our choice is to remove all Irish Sea border checks and then let the EU come up with a solution. If they impose checks on the Irish land border that's their choice. If they don't, then the problem is solved - NI is in UK and NI has open border with the EU.
Either way we do nothing and let the EU act or blink.
I don't think we have any checks on our side of the Irish sea. But how do you propose to remove the checks in Dublin or (for that matter) Belfast.
I think his argument is that if the RoI was to impose a hard border to do RoI-NI checks following abolition (or a 'technological solution' improvement) of GB-NI checks, they're welcome to do so (they won't do so). Similar for the EU (also not stupid enough to do so).
Then we reach the only sustainable outcome for NI - a largely free border with both the UK and RoI, with some smuggling happening. The key to reaching that is keeping the EU utterly disinterested, while the parties with skin in the game find a workable solution.
Precisely!
It has been the obvious and only solution all along.
Sadly some people are so far up the EU's backside that they actually convince themselves that the UK must align with the EU as a real solution, as opposed to this.
Indeed. "Why won't you accept a long-term solution where you allow smuggling". Every responsible nation and trading area is happy to accept smuggling....
Every responsible nation and trading area accepts that smuggling is a fact of life and does their best to police and interdict.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday that compulsory vaccinations are legal and may be necessary in democratic societies.
The ruling came following the conclusion of a complaint brought to the court by Czech families regarding compulsory jabs for children.
"The measures could be regarded as being 'necessary in a democratic society'," the court judgment read.
Although the ruling did not deal directly with COVID-19 vaccines, experts believe it could have implications for vaccination drives against the virus, especially among those who have so far stated a refusal to accept the jab.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
The article link please so we can see the date and the full article as let's be honest you have a habit (to say the least) of misquoting
That is binding in international law. If you go to the WTO website as well they colour in NI as part of the UK in their maps. Yes we have a Protocol, yes we have laws, but internationally de jure Northern Ireland is part of our customs territory. Nothing has changed that, that is the last bit of law settled on that.
You might want to read Article 5 of that document in a lot more detail than you clearly have (not)..
The devil is in the detail and you haven't any clear of the detail...
Philip is seldom troubled by detail, or indeed facts.
nor in fact reality or seemingly a job...
Mind you, I can't talk today with several unopened files on my desk.
I’m taking a break to watch some cricket after smashing a large hole in a door.
No, I didn’t mistake it for Gavin Williamson, I’m fitting a new lock.
But I can’t do more until the actual lock arrives.
Well, that’s the excuse.
Nor can you leave the room / house (for security purposes) until the lock arrives so you have no choice but to watch the cricket
A perfect excuse.
Good point. I shall say that if anyone suggests I should do something.
PB continues to be obsessed with Scotland, while the PM's lies come home to roost in Northern Ireland.
We'll we're waiting for the Devil's Trifecta.
Indyref2, a border poll in NI, and I'm working out what the third one in this awful trifecta will be.
No 3. ART Davies becomes FM in Wales ensuring demands for Welsh Independence exceed 50% before the end of May.
If RT Davies becomes FM it will be because he is the most successful Welsh Tory leader ever and a humiliating result for Labour and Plaid, Wales voted for Brexit and it would cement Wales in Union with England even further.
It would also almost certainly require the Tories to be over 40% in Wales
That would indeed be true to just before the point where you write "cement Wales in Union with England even further". Do you think that blithering clown would do anything other than make the Conservatives unelectable in Wales for the remainder of the Millenium? And if Llafur are dead in the water, where does that lead us? PC!
If the Tories are over 40% (which they would need to be to form a deal with Abolish which is the only way RT becomes FM), then RT would likely scrap the Senedd anyway with Abolish and Wales would return to full union with England. RT would clearly not be unelectable in Wales, the opposite, he would be the most successful Tory leader in Wales ever if he got over 40%.
RT would get rewarded with a safe seat at Westminster then after
...and as such my anticipation of a surge in Welsh independence post FM RT, is reality.
It isn't, if the Tories get over 40% and Abolish get 10%+ (which is the only way RT becomes FM), then RT would clearly have a mandate to abolish the Senedd.
Wales would return to just being part of Westminster and Welsh voters would have voted for that
Of course he would not
He is not standing on a mandate for that and it seems only you can come up with a bizarre response that would see the end of all conservatives and their mps in Wales
You have an incredibly insane attitude to both Scotland and now Wales
My only consolation is that at least I have found a conservative even more stupid that Andrew RT Davies and that says it all
RT has refused to rule out a post election deal with Abolish the Assembly if they had the numbers together for a Senedd majority, remember 49% of Welsh voters even voted against having an Assembly in 1997
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
And yet such an easy solution eludes us - because it isn't based in reality. The bulk of Irish trade is food. We need to completely align our SPS standards with the EU and do a deal to remove the checks. Our standards ARE completely aligned, but apparently we can't agree a deal because at some point in the future the EU may increase their standards just to spite us.
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
We don't "need" to align our SPS with the EU.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc . That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
Mate, you keep dancing on this same pinhead. If our standards are "equivalent" then it means they are close enough to the required standard. Which they are now. And will be in the future as we declare that standards will only ever be increased. So we could do this as you suggest, but it is declaring that our standards will different *but directly comparable* to EU ones. Which you won't accept.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Yes we can. We can recognise our standards as currently equivalent but not commit to alignment, with a dispute system if divergence occurs in the future.
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We can do whatever we want - the issue is so can the EU and because we won't agree to the EU's terms the EU are imposing the WTO rules they impose on imports from all third party countries.
Indeed.
So our choice is to remove all Irish Sea border checks and then let the EU come up with a solution. If they impose checks on the Irish land border that's their choice. If they don't, then the problem is solved - NI is in UK and NI has open border with the EU.
Either way we do nothing and let the EU act or blink.
I don't think we have any checks on our side of the Irish sea. But how do you propose to remove the checks in Dublin or (for that matter) Belfast.
I think his argument is that if the RoI was to impose a hard border to do RoI-NI checks following abolition (or a 'technological solution' improvement) of GB-NI checks, they're welcome to do so (they won't do so). Similar for the EU (also not stupid enough to do so).
Then we reach the only sustainable outcome for NI - a largely free border with both the UK and RoI, with some smuggling happening. The key to reaching that is keeping the EU utterly disinterested, while the parties with skin in the game find a workable solution.
Precisely!
It has been the obvious and only solution all along.
Sadly some people are so far up the EU's backside that they actually convince themselves that the UK must align with the EU as a real solution, as opposed to this.
Indeed. "Why won't you accept a long-term solution where you allow smuggling". Every responsible nation and trading area is happy to accept smuggling....
Every responsible nation and trading area accepts that smuggling is a fact of life and does their best to police and interdict.
You are taking a zero-COVID approach to policy
Correction - the EU are taking a zero-COVID approach to that policy (and that is their right).
Is it not the case that Boris had only three choices: the choice of not signing up to Brexit at all; exiting without a deal; and exiting with a deal which explicitly included an NI deal which could not be implemented.
Choice one was politically impossible given the Referendum result.
Choice two was possible politically but only until about 5 minutes after it happened at which point we would be in unknown unknowns immediately.
Choice three was the only sane and politically possible option. That is what he did, knowing that he had to be terminologically inexact about it, and that it could not stand, and that therefore on another day, which is now coming, all parties - EU, NI, RoI, UK - will have to renegotiate the deal either openly or secretly.
One of the great recent unknowns, and part of me would love to know the answer, is: What would the EU RoI have done if Boris had, impossibly, left without a deal and simply left the border open. The problem, with no solution, would then be thrown onto the EU/RoI. Boris, being Boris, must have felt tempted sometimes.
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
And yet such an easy solution eludes us - because it isn't based in reality. The bulk of Irish trade is food. We need to completely align our SPS standards with the EU and do a deal to remove the checks. Our standards ARE completely aligned, but apparently we can't agree a deal because at some point in the future the EU may increase their standards just to spite us.
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
We don't "need" to align our SPS with the EU.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc . That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
Mate, you keep dancing on this same pinhead. If our standards are "equivalent" then it means they are close enough to the required standard. Which they are now. And will be in the future as we declare that standards will only ever be increased. So we could do this as you suggest, but it is declaring that our standards will different *but directly comparable* to EU ones. Which you won't accept.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Yes we can. We can recognise our standards as currently equivalent but not commit to alignment, with a dispute system if divergence occurs in the future.
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We can do whatever we want - the issue is so can the EU and because we won't agree to the EU's terms the EU are imposing the WTO rules they impose on imports from all third party countries.
Indeed.
So our choice is to remove all Irish Sea border checks and then let the EU come up with a solution. If they impose checks on the Irish land border that's their choice. If they don't, then the problem is solved - NI is in UK and NI has open border with the EU.
Either way we do nothing and let the EU act or blink.
I don't think we have any checks on our side of the Irish sea. But how do you propose to remove the checks in Dublin or (for that matter) Belfast.
I think his argument is that if the RoI was to impose a hard border to do RoI-NI checks following abolition (or a 'technological solution' improvement) of GB-NI checks, they're welcome to do so (they won't do so). Similar for the EU (also not stupid enough to do so).
Then we reach the only sustainable outcome for NI - a largely free border with both the UK and RoI, with some smuggling happening. The key to reaching that is keeping the EU utterly disinterested, while the parties with skin in the game find a workable solution.
Precisely!
It has been the obvious and only solution all along.
Sadly some people are so far up the EU's backside that they actually convince themselves that the UK must align with the EU as a real solution, as opposed to this.
Indeed. "Why won't you accept a long-term solution where you allow smuggling". Every responsible nation and trading area is happy to accept smuggling....
Every responsible nation and trading area accepts that smuggling is a fact of life and does their best to police and interdict.
You are taking a zero-COVID approach to policy
Correction - the EU are taking a zero-COVID approach to that policy (and that is their right).
Yes we're getting somewhere. It is their right.
It is our right to take a zero-COVID approach to "societal difficulties" as per Article 16 and to override Article 5 as a result. That is also within our right.
We all have rights. If they take a zero-COVID approach on one, we can reciprocate, then we end up in dispute resolution. But since A16 has been invoked (if they do my policy) and since NI is part of the UK customs territory (as explicitly recognised) then we are in control. Our zero COVID and their zero COVID collide, there's no checks in Belfast, then we need to figure out next steps.
Britain will clock up faster economic growth than the US and Europe next year as the recovery is turbocharged by the country's world-leading vaccination scheme and a Treasury spending spree, the International Monetary Fund has said...
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
What am I wrong on precisely you pillock? Checkmate?!! I doubt you would win against a five year old in a game of draughts! Actually you would probably find "snap" a little perplexing
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
And yet such an easy solution eludes us - because it isn't based in reality. The bulk of Irish trade is food. We need to completely align our SPS standards with the EU and do a deal to remove the checks. Our standards ARE completely aligned, but apparently we can't agree a deal because at some point in the future the EU may increase their standards just to spite us.
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
We don't "need" to align our SPS with the EU.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc . That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
Mate, you keep dancing on this same pinhead. If our standards are "equivalent" then it means they are close enough to the required standard. Which they are now. And will be in the future as we declare that standards will only ever be increased. So we could do this as you suggest, but it is declaring that our standards will different *but directly comparable* to EU ones. Which you won't accept.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Yes we can. We can recognise our standards as currently equivalent but not commit to alignment, with a dispute system if divergence occurs in the future.
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We can do whatever we want - the issue is so can the EU and because we won't agree to the EU's terms the EU are imposing the WTO rules they impose on imports from all third party countries.
Indeed.
So our choice is to remove all Irish Sea border checks and then let the EU come up with a solution. If they impose checks on the Irish land border that's their choice. If they don't, then the problem is solved - NI is in UK and NI has open border with the EU.
Either way we do nothing and let the EU act or blink.
I don't think we have any checks on our side of the Irish sea. But how do you propose to remove the checks in Dublin or (for that matter) Belfast.
I think his argument is that if the RoI was to impose a hard border to do RoI-NI checks following abolition (or a 'technological solution' improvement) of GB-NI checks, they're welcome to do so (they won't do so). Similar for the EU (also not stupid enough to do so).
Then we reach the only sustainable outcome for NI - a largely free border with both the UK and RoI, with some smuggling happening. The key to reaching that is keeping the EU utterly disinterested, while the parties with skin in the game find a workable solution.
Precisely!
It has been the obvious and only solution all along.
Sadly some people are so far up the EU's backside that they actually convince themselves that the UK must align with the EU as a real solution, as opposed to this.
Indeed. "Why won't you accept a long-term solution where you allow smuggling". Every responsible nation and trading area is happy to accept smuggling....
Every responsible nation and trading area accepts that smuggling is a fact of life and does their best to police and interdict.
You are taking a zero-COVID approach to policy
Correction - the EU are taking a zero-COVID approach to that policy (and that is their right).
Is it? The EU agreed to work on a trusted trader scheme. I see no evidence they have done so. As Charles has pointed out, it takes 95% of the current issues away.
Been in a meeting for an hour so have missed Philip's comedy arrogance.
GB and NI are now legally separate from a customs perspective. I need to apply for an export licence to ship products to NI from GB, I do not inside GB. Philip can mock and laugh and cite whatever nonsense he likes. The UK government are clear that NI is not in customs union with GB as any trader knows very well.
If Philip wants to disagree with the UK government on this issue then perhaps we just let him and move on.
Britain will clock up faster economic growth than the US and Europe next year as the recovery is turbocharged by the country's world-leading vaccination scheme and a Treasury spending spree, the International Monetary Fund has said...
I'm still here, and I have no doubt there will be a short term spending led boom as the punters blow their furlough savings on anything that takes their fancy. There will also be a burgeoning boom in small business growth as the Government incentivises 'start-ups' and every High Street can boast a dozen barber shops and sandwich bars.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
What am I wrong on precisely you pillock? Checkmate?!! I doubt you would win against a five year old in a game of draughts! Actually you would probably find "snap" a little perplexing
You were wrong in falsely claiming that NI was part of the EU's customs territory not the UK's. It is explicitly recognised as the other way around, NI is part of the UK's territory.
The NI Protocol was quite clever. If there's no societal difficulties likely to persist from the Protocol then who cares, life goes on.
If there are societal difficulties likely to persist then the Protocol Article 16 gives the UK (and the EU) unilateral rights to do whatever it considers necessary to resolve those difficulties.
So either way we have no issue. If there's no difficulties there's no problem. If there are difficulties (and everyone agrees there are) we invoke Article 16 and move on.
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
And yet such an easy solution eludes us - because it isn't based in reality. The bulk of Irish trade is food. We need to completely align our SPS standards with the EU and do a deal to remove the checks. Our standards ARE completely aligned, but apparently we can't agree a deal because at some point in the future the EU may increase their standards just to spite us.
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
We don't "need" to align our SPS with the EU.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc . That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
Mate, you keep dancing on this same pinhead. If our standards are "equivalent" then it means they are close enough to the required standard. Which they are now. And will be in the future as we declare that standards will only ever be increased. So we could do this as you suggest, but it is declaring that our standards will different *but directly comparable* to EU ones. Which you won't accept.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Yes we can. We can recognise our standards as currently equivalent but not commit to alignment, with a dispute system if divergence occurs in the future.
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We can do whatever we want - the issue is so can the EU and because we won't agree to the EU's terms the EU are imposing the WTO rules they impose on imports from all third party countries.
Indeed.
So our choice is to remove all Irish Sea border checks and then let the EU come up with a solution. If they impose checks on the Irish land border that's their choice. If they don't, then the problem is solved - NI is in UK and NI has open border with the EU.
Either way we do nothing and let the EU act or blink.
I don't think we have any checks on our side of the Irish sea. But how do you propose to remove the checks in Dublin or (for that matter) Belfast.
I think his argument is that if the RoI was to impose a hard border to do RoI-NI checks following abolition (or a 'technological solution' improvement) of GB-NI checks, they're welcome to do so (they won't do so). Similar for the EU (also not stupid enough to do so).
Then we reach the only sustainable outcome for NI - a largely free border with both the UK and RoI, with some smuggling happening. The key to reaching that is keeping the EU utterly disinterested, while the parties with skin in the game find a workable solution.
Precisely!
It has been the obvious and only solution all along.
Sadly some people are so far up the EU's backside that they actually convince themselves that the UK must align with the EU as a real solution, as opposed to this.
Indeed. "Why won't you accept a long-term solution where you allow smuggling". Every responsible nation and trading area is happy to accept smuggling....
Every responsible nation and trading area accepts that smuggling is a fact of life and does their best to police and interdict.
You are taking a zero-COVID approach to policy
Correction - the EU are taking a zero-COVID approach to that policy (and that is their right).
Is it? The EU agreed to work on a trusted trader scheme. I see no evidence they have done so. As Charles has pointed out, it takes 95% of the current issues away.
They complained that the UK wanted too many trusted traders.
Been in a meeting for an hour so have missed Philip's comedy arrogance.
GB and NI are now legally separate from a customs perspective. I need to apply for an export licence to ship products to NI from GB, I do not inside GB. Philip can mock and laugh and cite whatever nonsense he likes. The UK government are clear that NI is not in customs union with GB as any trader knows very well.
If Philip wants to disagree with the UK government on this issue then perhaps we just let him and move on.
The UK government and EU and ROI government and WTO all say you're wrong.
They're only separated de facto by decisions taken within the Protocol Article 5 that can be replaced under Protocol Article 16 if there are societal difficulties.
So the question to answer is are there societal difficulties, yes or no? If yes, invoke Article 16 and move on. If no, what's the problem?
I am afraid Alanbrooke is correct Leo Varadkar in particular has messed about when the long held view of the main political parties in Ireland has been to let the sleeping dogs lie and the constitutional issue may at some point (like 30+ years hence) work its way through. No hurry, no problem. People also forget how much large sections of what may be considered nationalists in Northern Ireland weren't exactly in a hurry either. Poll after poll showed a kind of 'sometime maybe a bit later' being a big slice of the population.
I suspect Martin has the ability to work this differently. He considers himself, as most politicians down south do, as an avowed nationalist but he has been involved from way back with things up here so knows the picture. Over the last few of years there has been the odd intervention of senior Fianna Fail figures who were involved in the political negotiations up back in the 90s & 2000s here warning the Varadkar led government that you had to bring unionism along.
They made those interventions because they saw Varadkar was being too arrogant about it.
The protocol is a problem less because of the principle which I suspect could have been got away with if it it didn't have such a visible impact. The practicalities of it have been absurd and the EU, London & Dublin should have caught themselves on . Get a bit pragmatic they could have dealt with it, but they didn't and now we are where we are.
What, however, has really tipped it over is the failure to sanction those people who turned up at Bobby Storeys funeral in about as blatant a break of Covid regulations as you could get. The inescapable conclusion is that they police didn't want to put up in court or fine (which would have been the logical move) the Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister & other Sinn Fein politicians because of exactly who they were. I know enough people in well informed positions who know they bottled it. And just as note every other major political party here apart from Sinn Fein was pissed off about it because they could see exactly what the implication was, impunity.
Off topic
I acceded to your earlier claim that I was talking nonsense and the national identity- sectarian link had been left in the 1980s, and accepted your "off topic" as such. I am less inclined, now you have demonstrated your 'scratch the surface' partisanship (and I consider my words carefully) in this post, and that you accept Philip Thompson and others' wholly uninformed commentary because it fits your narrative.
My point was not at all partisan from the point of picking sides with Unionists or Nationalists. I was suggesting that Boris Johnson (and Mrs May before him) have even less understanding than I do, and Johnson in particular, should be treading a lot more carefully than he has to date.
It doesn't take a genius to know I'm a unionist. No secret that I'm broadly a conservative voter no secret I'm relatively libertarian. All those have been in clear sight since the earliest days of me posting here. Its a political forum. My issue was entirely around the idea that sectarianism defines everything. It doesn't anymore and in many ways never did. If you associate with people, for example, who still talk about the 'war' , a term that most people simply don't recognise, you will be under the impression that religious sectarianism is central because they are the ones feeding it.
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
And yet such an easy solution eludes us - because it isn't based in reality. The bulk of Irish trade is food. We need to completely align our SPS standards with the EU and do a deal to remove the checks. Our standards ARE completely aligned, but apparently we can't agree a deal because at some point in the future the EU may increase their standards just to spite us.
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
We don't "need" to align our SPS with the EU.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc . That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
Mate, you keep dancing on this same pinhead. If our standards are "equivalent" then it means they are close enough to the required standard. Which they are now. And will be in the future as we declare that standards will only ever be increased. So we could do this as you suggest, but it is declaring that our standards will different *but directly comparable* to EU ones. Which you won't accept.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Yes we can. We can recognise our standards as currently equivalent but not commit to alignment, with a dispute system if divergence occurs in the future.
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We can do whatever we want - the issue is so can the EU and because we won't agree to the EU's terms the EU are imposing the WTO rules they impose on imports from all third party countries.
Indeed.
So our choice is to remove all Irish Sea border checks and then let the EU come up with a solution. If they impose checks on the Irish land border that's their choice. If they don't, then the problem is solved - NI is in UK and NI has open border with the EU.
Either way we do nothing and let the EU act or blink.
I don't think we have any checks on our side of the Irish sea. But how do you propose to remove the checks in Dublin or (for that matter) Belfast.
I think his argument is that if the RoI was to impose a hard border to do RoI-NI checks following abolition (or a 'technological solution' improvement) of GB-NI checks, they're welcome to do so (they won't do so). Similar for the EU (also not stupid enough to do so).
Then we reach the only sustainable outcome for NI - a largely free border with both the UK and RoI, with some smuggling happening. The key to reaching that is keeping the EU utterly disinterested, while the parties with skin in the game find a workable solution.
Precisely!
It has been the obvious and only solution all along.
Sadly some people are so far up the EU's backside that they actually convince themselves that the UK must align with the EU as a real solution, as opposed to this.
Indeed. "Why won't you accept a long-term solution where you allow smuggling". Every responsible nation and trading area is happy to accept smuggling....
Every responsible nation and trading area accepts that smuggling is a fact of life and does their best to police and interdict.
You are taking a zero-COVID approach to policy
Correction - the EU are taking a zero-COVID approach to that policy (and that is their right).
Is it? The EU agreed to work on a trusted trader scheme. I see no evidence they have done so. As Charles has pointed out, it takes 95% of the current issues away.
Now that is a way more valid argument than anything Philip has come up with - however there is zero incentive for the EU to implement a scheme when the UK is very happy for everything to arrive without checks.
Only were the UK to start being awkward with imports does the EU need to start playing fair. At the moment they've spent months discouraging fresh food imports without anyone in the UK doing anything that would impact equivalent EU companies.
It's not officially an export ban, but it's not exactly free trade: It's the murky EU vaccine export strategy.
According to EU officials and diplomats, Brussels is pressuring vaccine makers to reprioritize shipments to the EU, even if that means other countries, such as Australia, will suffer additional delays. But it's not technically banning those exports.
In the latest episode of the EU's vaccine procurement drama, Australian government officials on Tuesday claimed the EU had effectively blocked millions of doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. The allegation contradicted the European Commission, which on Wednesday again insisted it had so far only blocked a single shipment to Australia of 250,000 doses. Observers and journalists scrambled to find out which side was right.
It turns out, both were.
While the EU officially hasn't blocked more vaccine shipments, it has been leaning on vaccine producers to send doses to the EU instead of other countries.
Effectively, that means the EU has managed to stop more vaccine exports than those it has officially halted, officials in Brussels and Australia said.
Australia, for instance, has not received any Oxford/AstraZeneca shipments from the EU since February, according to Canberra, even as the EU continued to receive doses (though far fewer than the company had originally promised).
Does the London poll show a more general problem for Labour ?
Firstly let us broadly categorise Labour as centre left-authoritarian (Well they are supporting most covid measures at the moment), the Lib Dems as centre left-libertarian and the greens as well left. Further the Tories as right authoritarian and Reform as Right-libertarian
The right wing vote is split 29/3 whereas the left is split 44/11/11. That leaves London as broadly a 2/3 left / 1/3 right city.
But the right wing vote is entirely consolidated behind the Tories (91%) whereas Labour has 67% of the left vote.
Perhaps the most important by-election in the last few years was Peterborough, a Brexit party win would have I think irretrievably split the right vote away from the Tories particularly after the disastrous european elections. I know that's oversimplified but it could be a looming issue for Labour in what should be natural left leaning future city heartlands whereas rural England and Wales are almost entirely behind the Tories.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
What am I wrong on precisely you pillock? Checkmate?!! I doubt you would win against a five year old in a game of draughts! Actually you would probably find "snap" a little perplexing
You were wrong in falsely claiming that NI was part of the EU's customs territory not the UK's. It is explicitly recognised as the other way around, NI is part of the UK's territory.
The NI Protocol was quite clever. If there's no societal difficulties likely to persist from the Protocol then who cares, life goes on.
If there are societal difficulties likely to persist then the Protocol Article 16 gives the UK (and the EU) unilateral rights to do whatever it considers necessary to resolve those difficulties.
So either way we have no issue. If there's no difficulties there's no problem. If there are difficulties (and everyone agrees there are) we invoke Article 16 and move on.
That's why it was clever negotiations.
Much from you about this today. Energizer bunny.
In fact I get your position completely, but let’s take the lipstick off the pig. The EU’s biggest red line in Brexit was to protect the integrity of their single market. Since all sides – absolutely everyone - agreed there mustn’t under any circumstances be a border in Ireland it meant a border in the Irish Sea. That solemn undertaking was expressed in the Protocol. Letter and spirit.
You are saying we should renege on this. We should now refuse to implement the Irish Sea border and present them with a ‘devil and deep blue sea’ choice – put up a border in Ireland after all or accept a violation of the integrity of the single market. Which, I repeat, was their biggest red line, perhaps their one and only genuine red line.
“Tough,” you might say. Or “Cool, we win!” We protect the UK single market and if they put a border across Ireland and it causes trouble that’s “on them” (to use the rather chippy phrase that the more bumptious Leavers seem to like). Also “on them” if they choose to live with a hole in their single market. Ditto if they take us to court and get embroiled in that for years. All on them.
And you’re right in a sense. It is on them. It’s on them for assuming that the UK government was negotiating the Brexit deal in good faith. For assuming that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were not a political incarnation of Delboy and Rodney.
But now they know better, and so does the rest of the world. It’s a “win” at the price of looking like a rogue nation that has chosen to defect from normal good practice in international affairs and instead conduct itself according to the grubby character of the individual who just happens to be our PM at this moment.
Galloway is standing in South Scotland on the list where he lives, so he could get in with votes from Tories in the Borders given the Tories will largely win most of the constituencies there again.
Would be amusing if Galloway got in on the list but Salmond did not
I think Johnson was right. Letting the Northern Irish tail wag the British dog again would have been ridiculous, and probably led to serious riots in England.
My preferred solution is still for us to get rid of Northern Ireland, which has been an embarassing and expensive curse for centuries.
Certainly not from the Conservative and Unionist Party, the latter part of which came from opposition even to Irish Home Rule
It is true, but political positions of a century and a half ago should not determine what we think or do today.
Northern Ireland is a huge drain on our economy and politics and gives us nothing in return. The Republicans actively want to sabotage the country, and the Unionists would have landed us with Corbyn in 2017 if we hadn't bribed them. So we're much better off without them.
I feel that about London
can we ditch that too ?
You think London is a huge drain on our economy and gives us nothing in return?
Yes
Don't fully agree but you have a point. It sucks in and crowds out.
London is the brains (and piggybank) of the country. Northern Ireland is its malignant (and expensive) tumour.
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
And yet such an easy solution eludes us - because it isn't based in reality. The bulk of Irish trade is food. We need to completely align our SPS standards with the EU and do a deal to remove the checks. Our standards ARE completely aligned, but apparently we can't agree a deal because at some point in the future the EU may increase their standards just to spite us.
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
We don't "need" to align our SPS with the EU.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc . That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
Mate, you keep dancing on this same pinhead. If our standards are "equivalent" then it means they are close enough to the required standard. Which they are now. And will be in the future as we declare that standards will only ever be increased. So we could do this as you suggest, but it is declaring that our standards will different *but directly comparable* to EU ones. Which you won't accept.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Yes we can. We can recognise our standards as currently equivalent but not commit to alignment, with a dispute system if divergence occurs in the future.
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We can do whatever we want - the issue is so can the EU and because we won't agree to the EU's terms the EU are imposing the WTO rules they impose on imports from all third party countries.
Indeed.
So our choice is to remove all Irish Sea border checks and then let the EU come up with a solution. If they impose checks on the Irish land border that's their choice. If they don't, then the problem is solved - NI is in UK and NI has open border with the EU.
Either way we do nothing and let the EU act or blink.
I don't think we have any checks on our side of the Irish sea. But how do you propose to remove the checks in Dublin or (for that matter) Belfast.
I think his argument is that if the RoI was to impose a hard border to do RoI-NI checks following abolition (or a 'technological solution' improvement) of GB-NI checks, they're welcome to do so (they won't do so). Similar for the EU (also not stupid enough to do so).
Then we reach the only sustainable outcome for NI - a largely free border with both the UK and RoI, with some smuggling happening. The key to reaching that is keeping the EU utterly disinterested, while the parties with skin in the game find a workable solution.
Precisely!
It has been the obvious and only solution all along.
Sadly some people are so far up the EU's backside that they actually convince themselves that the UK must align with the EU as a real solution, as opposed to this.
Indeed. "Why won't you accept a long-term solution where you allow smuggling". Every responsible nation and trading area is happy to accept smuggling....
Every responsible nation and trading area accepts that smuggling is a fact of life and does their best to police and interdict.
You are taking a zero-COVID approach to policy
Correction - the EU are taking a zero-COVID approach to that policy (and that is their right).
Is it? The EU agreed to work on a trusted trader scheme. I see no evidence they have done so. As Charles has pointed out, it takes 95% of the current issues away.
Now that is a way more valid argument than anything Philip has come up with - however there is zero incentive for the EU to implement a scheme when the UK is very happy for everything to arrive without checks.
Well it is the EU who want "integrity" more than we do, if we invoke Article 16 and cease to do any checks then a trusted trader scheme with 2000 firms is more secure than a free-for-all.
Britain will clock up faster economic growth than the US and Europe next year as the recovery is turbocharged by the country's world-leading vaccination scheme and a Treasury spending spree, the International Monetary Fund has said...
I'm still here, and I have no doubt there will be a short term spending led boom as the punters blow their furlough savings on anything that takes their fancy. There will also be a burgeoning boom in small business growth as the Government incentivises 'start-ups' and every High Street can boast a dozen barber shops and sandwich bars.
You 'have no doubt' about that, and yet simultaneously have been telling us every other day that an unavoidable economic crisis is just about to sweep the Tories away. A year of vaccine success, a year of economic boom, and pretty soon you're looking at a substantial chunk of the Parliament in which Boris and the Government will have done nothing but win.
Still, I'm sure Sir Keir will relish the opportunity to make a fourth impression at that point...
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
And yet such an easy solution eludes us - because it isn't based in reality. The bulk of Irish trade is food. We need to completely align our SPS standards with the EU and do a deal to remove the checks. Our standards ARE completely aligned, but apparently we can't agree a deal because at some point in the future the EU may increase their standards just to spite us.
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
We don't "need" to align our SPS with the EU.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc . That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
Mate, you keep dancing on this same pinhead. If our standards are "equivalent" then it means they are close enough to the required standard. Which they are now. And will be in the future as we declare that standards will only ever be increased. So we could do this as you suggest, but it is declaring that our standards will different *but directly comparable* to EU ones. Which you won't accept.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Yes we can. We can recognise our standards as currently equivalent but not commit to alignment, with a dispute system if divergence occurs in the future.
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We can do whatever we want - the issue is so can the EU and because we won't agree to the EU's terms the EU are imposing the WTO rules they impose on imports from all third party countries.
Indeed.
So our choice is to remove all Irish Sea border checks and then let the EU come up with a solution. If they impose checks on the Irish land border that's their choice. If they don't, then the problem is solved - NI is in UK and NI has open border with the EU.
Either way we do nothing and let the EU act or blink.
I don't think we have any checks on our side of the Irish sea. But how do you propose to remove the checks in Dublin or (for that matter) Belfast.
I think his argument is that if the RoI was to impose a hard border to do RoI-NI checks following abolition (or a 'technological solution' improvement) of GB-NI checks, they're welcome to do so (they won't do so). Similar for the EU (also not stupid enough to do so).
Then we reach the only sustainable outcome for NI - a largely free border with both the UK and RoI, with some smuggling happening. The key to reaching that is keeping the EU utterly disinterested, while the parties with skin in the game find a workable solution.
Precisely!
It has been the obvious and only solution all along.
Sadly some people are so far up the EU's backside that they actually convince themselves that the UK must align with the EU as a real solution, as opposed to this.
Indeed. "Why won't you accept a long-term solution where you allow smuggling". Every responsible nation and trading area is happy to accept smuggling....
Every responsible nation and trading area accepts that smuggling is a fact of life and does their best to police and interdict.
You are taking a zero-COVID approach to policy
Correction - the EU are taking a zero-COVID approach to that policy (and that is their right).
Is it? The EU agreed to work on a trusted trader scheme. I see no evidence they have done so. As Charles has pointed out, it takes 95% of the current issues away.
Now that is a way more valid argument than anything Philip has come up with - however there is zero incentive for the EU to implement a scheme when the UK is very happy for everything to arrive without checks.
That's a completely circular argument though, the UK government is happy for that to happen because the EU hasn't done anything on the trusted trader scheme it committed itself to implementing. The scheme has to come first before the UK government gives the okay to drop the full exemption on checks.
I think Johnson was right. Letting the Northern Irish tail wag the British dog again would have been ridiculous, and probably led to serious riots in England.
My preferred solution is still for us to get rid of Northern Ireland, which has been an embarassing and expensive curse for centuries.
Certainly not from the Conservative and Unionist Party, the latter part of which came from opposition even to Irish Home Rule
It is true, but political positions of a century and a half ago should not determine what we think or do today.
Northern Ireland is a huge drain on our economy and politics and gives us nothing in return. The Republicans actively want to sabotage the country, and the Unionists would have landed us with Corbyn in 2017 if we hadn't bribed them. So we're much better off without them.
I feel that about London
can we ditch that too ?
You think London is a huge drain on our economy and gives us nothing in return?
Yes
Don't fully agree but you have a point. It sucks in and crowds out.
London is the brains (and piggybank) of the country. Northern Ireland is its malignant (and expensive) tumour.
Yes, as much as us bumpkins might wonder why anyone wants to pay 1500 a month for a small cupboard beneath the stairs, London does serve an important purpose. NI, not so much.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
What am I wrong on precisely you pillock? Checkmate?!! I doubt you would win against a five year old in a game of draughts! Actually you would probably find "snap" a little perplexing
You were wrong in falsely claiming that NI was part of the EU's customs territory not the UK's. It is explicitly recognised as the other way around, NI is part of the UK's territory.
The NI Protocol was quite clever. If there's no societal difficulties likely to persist from the Protocol then who cares, life goes on.
If there are societal difficulties likely to persist then the Protocol Article 16 gives the UK (and the EU) unilateral rights to do whatever it considers necessary to resolve those difficulties.
So either way we have no issue. If there's no difficulties there's no problem. If there are difficulties (and everyone agrees there are) we invoke Article 16 and move on.
That's why it was clever negotiations.
Much from you about this today. Energizer bunny.
In fact I get your position completely, but let’s take the lipstick off the pig. The EU’s biggest red line in Brexit was to protect the integrity of their single market. Since all sides – absolutely everyone - agreed there mustn’t under any circumstances be a border in Ireland it meant a border in the Irish Sea. That solemn undertaking was expressed in the Protocol. Letter and spirit.
You are saying we should renege on this. We should now refuse to implement the Irish Sea border and present them with a ‘devil and deep blue sea’ choice – put up a border in Ireland after all or accept a violation of the integrity of the single market. Which, I repeat, was their biggest red line, perhaps their one and only genuine red line.
“Tough,” you might say. Or “Cool, we win!” We protect the UK single market and if they put a border across Ireland and it causes trouble that’s “on them” (to use the rather chippy phrase that the more bumptious Leavers seem to like). Also “on them” if they choose to live with a hole in their single market. Ditto if they take us to court and get embroiled in that for years. All on them.
And you’re right in a sense. It is on them. It’s on them for assuming that the UK government was negotiating the Brexit deal in good faith. For assuming that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were not a political incarnation of Delboy and Rodney.
But now they know better, and so does the rest of the world. It’s a “win” at the price of looking like a rogue nation that has chosen to defect from normal good practice in international affairs and instead conduct itself according to the grubby character of the individual who just happens to be our PM at this moment.
Yay.
You're very close, you nearly have it, but are wrong in a single critical point.
The NI Protocol gave conditions so long as they did not cause societal difficulties. I'm not saying we should be a "rogue nation" I'm saying we should exercise powers they agreed to in the Protocol. Be very solemn and sober and say things like "with deep regret there are ongoing societal problems that are likely to persist. The safety, security of Northern Ireland and the peace process must always come first, as both the UK and EU agreed, so with deep regret we need to invoke Article 16 to resolve these issues. This will be a temporary invocation until the UK and EU, in talks with all affected communities, can come to a solution that respects the peace process."
Don't be jingoistic and say "we win", that's between us, just keep being sombre and emphasising the peace process first and foremost. This is purely to ensure peace.
Who around the world would think we're grubby for putting peace first? The EU should have seen this coming before the Protocol was signed, many warned that there would be societal difficulties if this happened, but now that the warnings have come true the responsible thing to do is put peace first.
I am afraid Alanbrooke is correct Leo Varadkar in particular has messed about when the long held view of the main political parties in Ireland has been to let the sleeping dogs lie and the constitutional issue may at some point (like 30+ years hence) work its way through. No hurry, no problem. People also forget how much large sections of what may be considered nationalists in Northern Ireland weren't exactly in a hurry either. Poll after poll showed a kind of 'sometime maybe a bit later' being a big slice of the population.
I suspect Martin has the ability to work this differently. He considers himself, as most politicians down south do, as an avowed nationalist but he has been involved from way back with things up here so knows the picture. Over the last few of years there has been the odd intervention of senior Fianna Fail figures who were involved in the political negotiations up back in the 90s & 2000s here warning the Varadkar led government that you had to bring unionism along.
They made those interventions because they saw Varadkar was being too arrogant about it.
The protocol is a problem less because of the principle which I suspect could have been got away with if it it didn't have such a visible impact. The practicalities of it have been absurd and the EU, London & Dublin should have caught themselves on . Get a bit pragmatic they could have dealt with it, but they didn't and now we are where we are.
What, however, has really tipped it over is the failure to sanction those people who turned up at Bobby Storeys funeral in about as blatant a break of Covid regulations as you could get. The inescapable conclusion is that they police didn't want to put up in court or fine (which would have been the logical move) the Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister & other Sinn Fein politicians because of exactly who they were. I know enough people in well informed positions who know they bottled it. And just as note every other major political party here apart from Sinn Fein was pissed off about it because they could see exactly what the implication was, impunity.
Off topic
I acceded to your earlier claim that I was talking nonsense and the national identity- sectarian link had been left in the 1980s, and accepted your "off topic" as such. I am less inclined, now you have demonstrated your 'scratch the surface' partisanship (and I consider my words carefully) in this post, and that you accept Philip Thompson and others' wholly uninformed commentary because it fits your narrative.
My point was not at all partisan from the point of picking sides with Unionists or Nationalists. I was suggesting that Boris Johnson (and Mrs May before him) have even less understanding than I do, and Johnson in particular, should be treading a lot more carefully than he has to date.
It doesn't take a genius to know I'm a unionist. No secret that I'm broadly a conservative voter no secret I'm relatively libertarian. All those have been in clear sight since the earliest days of me posting here. Its a political forum. My issue was entirely around the idea that sectarianism defines everything. It doesn't anymore and in many ways never did. If you associate with people, for example, who still talk about the 'war' , a term that most people simply don't recognise, you will be under the impression that religious sectarianism is central because they are the ones feeding it.
With all due respect, I do not meet people who are consumed by the past. All are keen to get on with their lives. I do meet genuine people from both sides of the fence, one (from Antrim) told me that from a moderate Unionist perspective he enters the polling booth to vote Alliance, in order to put the partisan past behind him, but as the pencil touches the ballot paper old habits die hard and he votes DUP, he suggested moderate SF voters do the same.
The EMA's conclusions were correct and entirely consistent with the MHRA yesterday. If other countries followed our JCVI priority order, healthy 18 - 30s wouldn't get the AZ dose in the EU either. Crucially our JCVI and MHRA are linked up, the EU has no JCVI sole equivalent.
Britain will clock up faster economic growth than the US and Europe next year as the recovery is turbocharged by the country's world-leading vaccination scheme and a Treasury spending spree, the International Monetary Fund has said...
I'm still here, and I have no doubt there will be a short term spending led boom as the punters blow their furlough savings on anything that takes their fancy. There will also be a burgeoning boom in small business growth as the Government incentivises 'start-ups' and every High Street can boast a dozen barber shops and sandwich bars.
You 'have no doubt' about that, and yet simultaneously have been telling us every other day that an unavoidable economic crisis is just about to sweep the Tories away. A year of vaccine success, a year of economic boom, and pretty soon you're looking at a substantial chunk of the Parliament in which Boris and the Government will have done nothing but win.
Still, I'm sure Sir Keir will relish the opportunity to make a fourth impression at that point...
I also have no doubt that what follows the boom will be bust. Don't forget a generational change in economic activity has occurred in a year. That is hard to manage.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
What am I wrong on precisely you pillock? Checkmate?!! I doubt you would win against a five year old in a game of draughts! Actually you would probably find "snap" a little perplexing
You were wrong in falsely claiming that NI was part of the EU's customs territory not the UK's. It is explicitly recognised as the other way around, NI is part of the UK's territory.
The NI Protocol was quite clever. If there's no societal difficulties likely to persist from the Protocol then who cares, life goes on.
If there are societal difficulties likely to persist then the Protocol Article 16 gives the UK (and the EU) unilateral rights to do whatever it considers necessary to resolve those difficulties.
So either way we have no issue. If there's no difficulties there's no problem. If there are difficulties (and everyone agrees there are) we invoke Article 16 and move on.
That's why it was clever negotiations.
Much from you about this today. Energizer bunny.
In fact I get your position completely, but let’s take the lipstick off the pig. The EU’s biggest red line in Brexit was to protect the integrity of their single market. Since all sides – absolutely everyone - agreed there mustn’t under any circumstances be a border in Ireland it meant a border in the Irish Sea. That solemn undertaking was expressed in the Protocol. Letter and spirit.
You are saying we should renege on this. We should now refuse to implement the Irish Sea border and present them with a ‘devil and deep blue sea’ choice – put up a border in Ireland after all or accept a violation of the integrity of the single market. Which, I repeat, was their biggest red line, perhaps their one and only genuine red line.
“Tough,” you might say. Or “Cool, we win!” We protect the UK single market and if they put a border across Ireland and it causes trouble that’s “on them” (to use the rather chippy phrase that the more bumptious Leavers seem to like). Also “on them” if they choose to live with a hole in their single market. Ditto if they take us to court and get embroiled in that for years. All on them.
And you’re right in a sense. It is on them. It’s on them for assuming that the UK government was negotiating the Brexit deal in good faith. For assuming that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were not a political incarnation of Delboy and Rodney.
But now they know better, and so does the rest of the world. It’s a “win” at the price of looking like a rogue nation that has chosen to defect from normal good practice in international affairs and instead conduct itself according to the grubby character of the individual who just happens to be our PM at this moment.
Yay.
Except that your precious EU, so keen to defend the integrity of the single market, decided to put a border across Ireland and the single market WITHOUT EVEN ASKING IRELAND and only changed their minds when told, in slow simple words, that this was the most moronic act in EU history, which is quite some feat in itself
Bollocks to all this "red line holding", "legalistic" "rules-based organisation" crapola about the EU.
The EU is nothing of the sort. It bends and breaks rules all the time. From the Fiskal Kompakt to Spitzenkandidat, from letting Greece in the euro to shattering the rules on ECB borrowing to the smuggling of the EU Constitution past the voters by ignoring referendums, it is a grotesque bureaucratic racket. Fuck the EU. They are owed no debt of honour, the word is not in the EU lexicon.
What the EU is, however, is a pragmatic, slow-moving entity which serves to increase the wealth of its major states, especially France and Germany, even if it sometimes fails at this, quite badly.
It is time for that pragmatism to take over. If they can adopt an entire Constitution via a swindle, they can ignore a few chocolate hobnobs crossing a customs desk in Carrickfergus
I think Johnson was right. Letting the Northern Irish tail wag the British dog again would have been ridiculous, and probably led to serious riots in England.
My preferred solution is still for us to get rid of Northern Ireland, which has been an embarassing and expensive curse for centuries.
Certainly not from the Conservative and Unionist Party, the latter part of which came from opposition even to Irish Home Rule
It is true, but political positions of a century and a half ago should not determine what we think or do today.
Northern Ireland is a huge drain on our economy and politics and gives us nothing in return. The Republicans actively want to sabotage the country, and the Unionists would have landed us with Corbyn in 2017 if we hadn't bribed them. So we're much better off without them.
I feel that about London
can we ditch that too ?
You think London is a huge drain on our economy and gives us nothing in return?
Yes
Don't fully agree but you have a point. It sucks in and crowds out.
London is the brains (and piggybank) of the country. Northern Ireland is its malignant (and expensive) tumour.
I don't look upon impoverished regions of the country as being like malignant tumours. If in polemical mood I'd describe the City as being exactly like that - but let's just say that imo there are significant downsides to London's dominance and that I'd prefer a greater spread of wealth and opportunity.
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
And yet such an easy solution eludes us - because it isn't based in reality. The bulk of Irish trade is food. We need to completely align our SPS standards with the EU and do a deal to remove the checks. Our standards ARE completely aligned, but apparently we can't agree a deal because at some point in the future the EU may increase their standards just to spite us.
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
We don't "need" to align our SPS with the EU.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc . That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
Mate, you keep dancing on this same pinhead. If our standards are "equivalent" then it means they are close enough to the required standard. Which they are now. And will be in the future as we declare that standards will only ever be increased. So we could do this as you suggest, but it is declaring that our standards will different *but directly comparable* to EU ones. Which you won't accept.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Yes we can. We can recognise our standards as currently equivalent but not commit to alignment, with a dispute system if divergence occurs in the future.
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We can do whatever we want - the issue is so can the EU and because we won't agree to the EU's terms the EU are imposing the WTO rules they impose on imports from all third party countries.
Indeed.
So our choice is to remove all Irish Sea border checks and then let the EU come up with a solution. If they impose checks on the Irish land border that's their choice. If they don't, then the problem is solved - NI is in UK and NI has open border with the EU.
Either way we do nothing and let the EU act or blink.
I don't think we have any checks on our side of the Irish sea. But how do you propose to remove the checks in Dublin or (for that matter) Belfast.
I think his argument is that if the RoI was to impose a hard border to do RoI-NI checks following abolition (or a 'technological solution' improvement) of GB-NI checks, they're welcome to do so (they won't do so). Similar for the EU (also not stupid enough to do so).
Then we reach the only sustainable outcome for NI - a largely free border with both the UK and RoI, with some smuggling happening. The key to reaching that is keeping the EU utterly disinterested, while the parties with skin in the game find a workable solution.
Precisely!
It has been the obvious and only solution all along.
Sadly some people are so far up the EU's backside that they actually convince themselves that the UK must align with the EU as a real solution, as opposed to this.
Indeed. "Why won't you accept a long-term solution where you allow smuggling". Every responsible nation and trading area is happy to accept smuggling....
Every responsible nation and trading area accepts that smuggling is a fact of life and does their best to police and interdict.
You are taking a zero-COVID approach to policy
Correction - the EU are taking a zero-COVID approach to that policy (and that is their right).
Is it? The EU agreed to work on a trusted trader scheme. I see no evidence they have done so. As Charles has pointed out, it takes 95% of the current issues away.
Now that is a way more valid argument than anything Philip has come up with - however there is zero incentive for the EU to implement a scheme when the UK is very happy for everything to arrive without checks.
That's a completely circular argument though, the UK government is happy for that to happen because the EU hasn't done anything on the trusted trader scheme it committed itself to implementing. The scheme has to come first before the UK government gives the okay to drop the full exemption on checks.
So are we implementing such a scheme ourselves? I don't believe we are which is why the EU isn't.
And currently our lack of a scheme isn't impacting the EU's exporters but their lack of a scheme is impacting ours.
Galloway is standing in South Scotland on the list where he lives, so he could get in with votes from Tories in the Borders given the Tories will largely win most of the constituencies there again.
Would be amusing if Galloway got in on the list but Salmond did not
I am afraid Alanbrooke is correct Leo Varadkar in particular has messed about when the long held view of the main political parties in Ireland has been to let the sleeping dogs lie and the constitutional issue may at some point (like 30+ years hence) work its way through. No hurry, no problem. People also forget how much large sections of what may be considered nationalists in Northern Ireland weren't exactly in a hurry either. Poll after poll showed a kind of 'sometime maybe a bit later' being a big slice of the population.
I suspect Martin has the ability to work this differently. He considers himself, as most politicians down south do, as an avowed nationalist but he has been involved from way back with things up here so knows the picture. Over the last few of years there has been the odd intervention of senior Fianna Fail figures who were involved in the political negotiations up back in the 90s & 2000s here warning the Varadkar led government that you had to bring unionism along.
They made those interventions because they saw Varadkar was being too arrogant about it.
The protocol is a problem less because of the principle which I suspect could have been got away with if it it didn't have such a visible impact. The practicalities of it have been absurd and the EU, London & Dublin should have caught themselves on . Get a bit pragmatic they could have dealt with it, but they didn't and now we are where we are.
What, however, has really tipped it over is the failure to sanction those people who turned up at Bobby Storeys funeral in about as blatant a break of Covid regulations as you could get. The inescapable conclusion is that they police didn't want to put up in court or fine (which would have been the logical move) the Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister & other Sinn Fein politicians because of exactly who they were. I know enough people in well informed positions who know they bottled it. And just as note every other major political party here apart from Sinn Fein was pissed off about it because they could see exactly what the implication was, impunity.
Off topic
I acceded to your earlier claim that I was talking nonsense and the national identity- sectarian link had been left in the 1980s, and accepted your "off topic" as such. I am less inclined, now you have demonstrated your 'scratch the surface' partisanship (and I consider my words carefully) in this post, and that you accept Philip Thompson and others' wholly uninformed commentary because it fits your narrative.
My point was not at all partisan from the point of picking sides with Unionists or Nationalists. I was suggesting that Boris Johnson (and Mrs May before him) have even less understanding than I do, and Johnson in particular, should be treading a lot more carefully than he has to date.
It doesn't take a genius to know I'm a unionist. No secret that I'm broadly a conservative voter no secret I'm relatively libertarian. All those have been in clear sight since the earliest days of me posting here. Its a political forum. My issue was entirely around the idea that sectarianism defines everything. It doesn't anymore and in many ways never did. If you associate with people, for example, who still talk about the 'war' , a term that most people simply don't recognise, you will be under the impression that religious sectarianism is central because they are the ones feeding it.
With all due respect, I do not meet people who are consumed by the past. All are keen to get on with their lives. I do meet genuine people from both sides of the fence, one (from Antrim) told me that from a moderate Unionist perspective he enters the polling booth to vote Alliance, in order to put the partisan past behind him, but as the pencil touches the ballot paper old habits die hard and he votes DUP, he suggested moderate SF voters do the same.
Take a look at the two largest parties unionist & nationalist. They have or are stalling. Is that the death of sectarianism? No, but yes because some people are concluding they aren't running stuff too well and making Stormont work, i.e. normal politics.
I wonder whether there will be common underlying conditions between the people who have had the adverse effects to AZ?
Jonathan Van Tam needs to go to jail. This is what they have done, alongside Macron and the "German health official" who briefed Handelsblatt
JVT did his job in a calm, clear and measured way. Which was then reported in most of our press in a calm, clear and measured way.
By having scientists who are clear, up front and honest with the public is why Britons trust the process more than other nations. No stupid leaks, no fake news. Just the truth, unvarnished, given to us with transparency.
I am afraid Alanbrooke is correct Leo Varadkar in particular has messed about when the long held view of the main political parties in Ireland has been to let the sleeping dogs lie and the constitutional issue may at some point (like 30+ years hence) work its way through. No hurry, no problem. People also forget how much large sections of what may be considered nationalists in Northern Ireland weren't exactly in a hurry either. Poll after poll showed a kind of 'sometime maybe a bit later' being a big slice of the population.
I suspect Martin has the ability to work this differently. He considers himself, as most politicians down south do, as an avowed nationalist but he has been involved from way back with things up here so knows the picture. Over the last few of years there has been the odd intervention of senior Fianna Fail figures who were involved in the political negotiations up back in the 90s & 2000s here warning the Varadkar led government that you had to bring unionism along.
They made those interventions because they saw Varadkar was being too arrogant about it.
The protocol is a problem less because of the principle which I suspect could have been got away with if it it didn't have such a visible impact. The practicalities of it have been absurd and the EU, London & Dublin should have caught themselves on . Get a bit pragmatic they could have dealt with it, but they didn't and now we are where we are.
What, however, has really tipped it over is the failure to sanction those people who turned up at Bobby Storeys funeral in about as blatant a break of Covid regulations as you could get. The inescapable conclusion is that they police didn't want to put up in court or fine (which would have been the logical move) the Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister & other Sinn Fein politicians because of exactly who they were. I know enough people in well informed positions who know they bottled it. And just as note every other major political party here apart from Sinn Fein was pissed off about it because they could see exactly what the implication was, impunity.
Off topic
I acceded to your earlier claim that I was talking nonsense and the national identity- sectarian link had been left in the 1980s, and accepted your "off topic" as such. I am less inclined, now you have demonstrated your 'scratch the surface' partisanship (and I consider my words carefully) in this post, and that you accept Philip Thompson and others' wholly uninformed commentary because it fits your narrative.
My point was not at all partisan from the point of picking sides with Unionists or Nationalists. I was suggesting that Boris Johnson (and Mrs May before him) have even less understanding than I do, and Johnson in particular, should be treading a lot more carefully than he has to date.
It doesn't take a genius to know I'm a unionist. No secret that I'm broadly a conservative voter no secret I'm relatively libertarian. All those have been in clear sight since the earliest days of me posting here. Its a political forum. My issue was entirely around the idea that sectarianism defines everything. It doesn't anymore and in many ways never did. If you associate with people, for example, who still talk about the 'war' , a term that most people simply don't recognise, you will be under the impression that religious sectarianism is central because they are the ones feeding it.
With all due respect, I do not meet people who are consumed by the past. All are keen to get on with their lives. I do meet genuine people from both sides of the fence, one (from Antrim) told me that from a moderate Unionist perspective he enters the polling booth to vote Alliance, in order to put the partisan past behind him, but as the pencil touches the ballot paper old habits die hard and he votes DUP, he suggested moderate SF voters do the same.
Take a look at the two largest parties unionist & nationalist. They have or are stalling. Is that the death of sectarianism? No, but yes because some people are concluding they aren't running stuff too well and making Stormont work, i.e. normal politics.
I am afraid Alanbrooke is correct Leo Varadkar in particular has messed about when the long held view of the main political parties in Ireland has been to let the sleeping dogs lie and the constitutional issue may at some point (like 30+ years hence) work its way through. No hurry, no problem. People also forget how much large sections of what may be considered nationalists in Northern Ireland weren't exactly in a hurry either. Poll after poll showed a kind of 'sometime maybe a bit later' being a big slice of the population.
I suspect Martin has the ability to work this differently. He considers himself, as most politicians down south do, as an avowed nationalist but he has been involved from way back with things up here so knows the picture. Over the last few of years there has been the odd intervention of senior Fianna Fail figures who were involved in the political negotiations up back in the 90s & 2000s here warning the Varadkar led government that you had to bring unionism along.
They made those interventions because they saw Varadkar was being too arrogant about it.
The protocol is a problem less because of the principle which I suspect could have been got away with if it it didn't have such a visible impact. The practicalities of it have been absurd and the EU, London & Dublin should have caught themselves on . Get a bit pragmatic they could have dealt with it, but they didn't and now we are where we are.
What, however, has really tipped it over is the failure to sanction those people who turned up at Bobby Storeys funeral in about as blatant a break of Covid regulations as you could get. The inescapable conclusion is that they police didn't want to put up in court or fine (which would have been the logical move) the Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister & other Sinn Fein politicians because of exactly who they were. I know enough people in well informed positions who know they bottled it. And just as note every other major political party here apart from Sinn Fein was pissed off about it because they could see exactly what the implication was, impunity.
Off topic
I acceded to your earlier claim that I was talking nonsense and the national identity- sectarian link had been left in the 1980s, and accepted your "off topic" as such. I am less inclined, now you have demonstrated your 'scratch the surface' partisanship (and I consider my words carefully) in this post, and that you accept Philip Thompson and others' wholly uninformed commentary because it fits your narrative.
My point was not at all partisan from the point of picking sides with Unionists or Nationalists. I was suggesting that Boris Johnson (and Mrs May before him) have even less understanding than I do, and Johnson in particular, should be treading a lot more carefully than he has to date.
It doesn't take a genius to know I'm a unionist. No secret that I'm broadly a conservative voter no secret I'm relatively libertarian. All those have been in clear sight since the earliest days of me posting here. Its a political forum. My issue was entirely around the idea that sectarianism defines everything. It doesn't anymore and in many ways never did. If you associate with people, for example, who still talk about the 'war' , a term that most people simply don't recognise, you will be under the impression that religious sectarianism is central because they are the ones feeding it.
With all due respect, I do not meet people who are consumed by the past. All are keen to get on with their lives. I do meet genuine people from both sides of the fence, one (from Antrim) told me that from a moderate Unionist perspective he enters the polling booth to vote Alliance, in order to put the partisan past behind him, but as the pencil touches the ballot paper old habits die hard and he votes DUP, he suggested moderate SF voters do the same.
Take a look at the two largest parties unionist & nationalist. They have or are stalling. Is that the death of sectarianism? No, but yes because some people are concluding they aren't running stuff too well and making Stormont work, i.e. normal politics.
Sounds like there's a prisoners' dilemma thing going on here. Each side would like to vote for the non-sectarian lot. Yet they don't trust the other sect not to vote for their sectarian lot.
"RECALLING that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom
The Withdrawal Agreement, as ratified by the EU, the RoI, the UK and as hosted on the EU's own website says it explicitly. Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom, there are no ifs or buts about that, that is international law. Checkmate.
What am I wrong on precisely you pillock? Checkmate?!! I doubt you would win against a five year old in a game of draughts! Actually you would probably find "snap" a little perplexing
You were wrong in falsely claiming that NI was part of the EU's customs territory not the UK's. It is explicitly recognised as the other way around, NI is part of the UK's territory.
The NI Protocol was quite clever. If there's no societal difficulties likely to persist from the Protocol then who cares, life goes on.
If there are societal difficulties likely to persist then the Protocol Article 16 gives the UK (and the EU) unilateral rights to do whatever it considers necessary to resolve those difficulties.
So either way we have no issue. If there's no difficulties there's no problem. If there are difficulties (and everyone agrees there are) we invoke Article 16 and move on.
That's why it was clever negotiations.
Much from you about this today. Energizer bunny.
In fact I get your position completely, but let’s take the lipstick off the pig. The EU’s biggest red line in Brexit was to protect the integrity of their single market. Since all sides – absolutely everyone - agreed there mustn’t under any circumstances be a border in Ireland it meant a border in the Irish Sea. That solemn undertaking was expressed in the Protocol. Letter and spirit.
You are saying we should renege on this. We should now refuse to implement the Irish Sea border and present them with a ‘devil and deep blue sea’ choice – put up a border in Ireland after all or accept a violation of the integrity of the single market. Which, I repeat, was their biggest red line, perhaps their one and only genuine red line.
“Tough,” you might say. Or “Cool, we win!” We protect the UK single market and if they put a border across Ireland and it causes trouble that’s “on them” (to use the rather chippy phrase that the more bumptious Leavers seem to like). Also “on them” if they choose to live with a hole in their single market. Ditto if they take us to court and get embroiled in that for years. All on them.
And you’re right in a sense. It is on them. It’s on them for assuming that the UK government was negotiating the Brexit deal in good faith. For assuming that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were not a political incarnation of Delboy and Rodney.
But now they know better, and so does the rest of the world. It’s a “win” at the price of looking like a rogue nation that has chosen to defect from normal good practice in international affairs and instead conduct itself according to the grubby character of the individual who just happens to be our PM at this moment.
Yay.
Except that your precious EU, so keen to defend the integrity of the single market, decided to put a border across Ireland and the single market WITHOUT EVEN ASKING IRELAND and only changed their minds when told, in slow simple words, that this was the most moronic act in EU history, which is quite some feat in itself
Bollocks to all this "red line holding", "legalistic" "rules-based organisation" crapola about the EU.
The EU is nothing of the sort. It bends and breaks rules all the time. From the Fiskal Kompakt to Spitzenkandidat, from letting Greece in the euro to shattering the rules on ECB borrowing to the smuggling of the EU Constitution past the voters by ignoring referendums, it is a grotesque bureaucratic racket. Fuck the EU. They are owed no debt of honour, the word is not in the EU lexicon.
What the EU is, however, is a pragmatic, slow-moving entity which serves to increase the wealth of its major states, especially France and Germany, even if it sometimes fails at this, quite badly.
It is time for that pragmatism to take over. If they can adopt an entire Constitution via a swindle, they can ignore a few chocolate hobnobs crossing a customs desk in Carrickfergus
The EU does what is in their best interest.
Currently the EU believes it is in their best interest that no chocolate hobnobs enter the EU (including Northern Ireland) without a whole lot of extra paperwork.
The question is how do you change the game so it's in the EU's interest to ignore those hobnobs and I really don't think there is a way of doing so that Boris could politically accept.
I'd rather not derail this thread on Ireland, which generates more heat than light.
And I'm certainly not an expert on trade.
But the vast bulk of trade can be managed through a trusted trader / self-decleration / spot-check system. And you can use intelligence led monitoring to cover the rest.
The free movement of people is already covered by the CTA.
And yet such an easy solution eludes us - because it isn't based in reality. The bulk of Irish trade is food. We need to completely align our SPS standards with the EU and do a deal to remove the checks. Our standards ARE completely aligned, but apparently we can't agree a deal because at some point in the future the EU may increase their standards just to spite us.
Even outside of food, there are naysayers on this forum including your good self decrying the idea of agreed alignment which is the basis for trusted trader / self-declaration systems.
There is plenty of relevance to Scotland though - England thinking that it can drag savage appendages like NI and Scotland around to do something stupid against their will. The big push towards another independence vote up here is largely thanks to Brexit (and the Boris corrupt organisation), and they are literally rioting in NI.
"Respect democracy" doesn't work when its imposed destruction.
We don't "need" to align our SPS with the EU.
It would be entirely possible to diverge with the EU but to recognise each others's SPS as "equivalent" and remove the need for checks etc . That may affect the "integrity" of the Single Market but so be it, we would be making the same compromise in return. That is a genuine compromise, not chaining one party to another like a slave.
Mate, you keep dancing on this same pinhead. If our standards are "equivalent" then it means they are close enough to the required standard. Which they are now. And will be in the future as we declare that standards will only ever be increased. So we could do this as you suggest, but it is declaring that our standards will different *but directly comparable* to EU ones. Which you won't accept.
We can't wildly diverge our standards and recognise an equivalence which isn't there.
Yes we can. We can recognise our standards as currently equivalent but not commit to alignment, with a dispute system if divergence occurs in the future.
No commitments then, and if divergence leads to issues in the future you cross that bridge when you get there. If it doesn't, there's no issue.
We can do whatever we want - the issue is so can the EU and because we won't agree to the EU's terms the EU are imposing the WTO rules they impose on imports from all third party countries.
Indeed.
So our choice is to remove all Irish Sea border checks and then let the EU come up with a solution. If they impose checks on the Irish land border that's their choice. If they don't, then the problem is solved - NI is in UK and NI has open border with the EU.
Either way we do nothing and let the EU act or blink.
I don't think we have any checks on our side of the Irish sea. But how do you propose to remove the checks in Dublin or (for that matter) Belfast.
I think his argument is that if the RoI was to impose a hard border to do RoI-NI checks following abolition (or a 'technological solution' improvement) of GB-NI checks, they're welcome to do so (they won't do so). Similar for the EU (also not stupid enough to do so).
Then we reach the only sustainable outcome for NI - a largely free border with both the UK and RoI, with some smuggling happening. The key to reaching that is keeping the EU utterly disinterested, while the parties with skin in the game find a workable solution.
Precisely!
It has been the obvious and only solution all along.
Sadly some people are so far up the EU's backside that they actually convince themselves that the UK must align with the EU as a real solution, as opposed to this.
Indeed. "Why won't you accept a long-term solution where you allow smuggling". Every responsible nation and trading area is happy to accept smuggling....
Every responsible nation and trading area accepts that smuggling is a fact of life and does their best to police and interdict.
You are taking a zero-COVID approach to policy
Correction - the EU are taking a zero-COVID approach to that policy (and that is their right).
Is it? The EU agreed to work on a trusted trader scheme. I see no evidence they have done so. As Charles has pointed out, it takes 95% of the current issues away.
Now that is a way more valid argument than anything Philip has come up with - however there is zero incentive for the EU to implement a scheme when the UK is very happy for everything to arrive without checks.
That's a completely circular argument though, the UK government is happy for that to happen because the EU hasn't done anything on the trusted trader scheme it committed itself to implementing. The scheme has to come first before the UK government gives the okay to drop the full exemption on checks.
So are we implementing such a scheme ourselves? I don't believe we are which is why the EU isn't.
And currently our lack of a scheme isn't impacting the EU's exporters but their lack of a scheme is impacting ours.
No, it's a one way scheme for GB to NI that was agreed, the wider UK-EU one hasn't been formally agreed yet and is still being discussed. The implementation of it rests almost entirely with the EU though I'm sure the UK could assist if asked.
Comments
In fact he would have struggled to make it through his training year.
Although he could have been a civil servant, joined the DfE, and then gone on to be CEO of a MAT. They don’t have to be qualified teachers or, given my experience of some, have any brains at all.
https://twitter.com/thoughtland/status/1380096470947352576?s=21
https://twitter.com/peternimmo1/status/1380096332573073408?s=21
It seems others are more troubled by detail and facts than I am.
Trying to correct your misunderstandings is like arguing with Ian Paisley but at least Ian Paisley gave an entertaining sermon if you went to his church.
Article 16 also exists.
Which part of that are you struggling with?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/holland-park-school-london-colin-hall-academy-ceo-pay-salary-a9255176.html
If he had joined the DfE the permanent secretary there makes £217,651, again more than his PM salary
https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/The-Department-for-Education-UK-Permanent-Secretary-Salaries-E419688_D_KO32,51.htm#:~:text=£211,769 - £217,651&text=The typical The Department for,from £211,769 - £217,651.
No, I didn’t mistake it for Gavin Williamson, I’m fitting a new lock.
But I can’t do more until the actual lock arrives.
Well, that’s the excuse.
https://twitter.com/opiniumresearch/status/1380104594206900224?s=21
Leaving aside safeguarding, he simply doesn’t have the organisational or administrative skills to make it to the top in teaching. There is a reason why he succeeds brilliantly where campaigning is key and falls flat on his face in all his executive roles.
https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1380108837785583617?s=20
https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1380109113213001733?s=20
If we invoke Article 16 we can do whatever we need to "safeguard" the "societal difficulties that are liable to persist" "in order to remedy the situation".
A perfect excuse.
I would say that his problem though is that he *is* a standup, pretending to be PM.
You are taking a zero-COVID approach to policy
The ruling came following the conclusion of a complaint brought to the court by Czech families regarding compulsory jabs for children.
"The measures could be regarded as being 'necessary in a democratic society'," the court judgment read.
Although the ruling did not deal directly with COVID-19 vaccines, experts believe it could have implications for vaccination drives against the virus, especially among those who have so far stated a refusal to accept the jab.
https://www.dw.com/en/echr-rules-obligatory-vaccination-may-be-necessary/a-57128443
Brexit problems are coming home to roost and the economy - which is in a hole - seems to not being focussed on at present.
No period in recent political history has been easy, this will be no different.
Choice one was politically impossible given the Referendum result.
Choice two was possible politically but only until about 5 minutes after it happened at which point we would be in unknown unknowns immediately.
Choice three was the only sane and politically possible option. That is what he did, knowing that he had to be terminologically inexact about it, and that it could not stand, and that therefore on another day, which is now coming, all parties - EU, NI, RoI, UK - will have to renegotiate the deal either openly or secretly.
One of the great recent unknowns, and part of me would love to know the answer, is: What would the EU RoI have done if Boris had, impossibly, left without a deal and simply left the border open. The problem, with no solution, would then be thrown onto the EU/RoI. Boris, being Boris, must have felt tempted sometimes.
It is our right to take a zero-COVID approach to "societal difficulties" as per Article 16 and to override Article 5 as a result. That is also within our right.
We all have rights. If they take a zero-COVID approach on one, we can reciprocate, then we end up in dispute resolution. But since A16 has been invoked (if they do my policy) and since NI is part of the UK customs territory (as explicitly recognised) then we are in control. Our zero COVID and their zero COVID collide, there's no checks in Belfast, then we need to figure out next steps.
https://twitter.com/indy_swim/status/1379908115899031560?s=21 https://twitter.com/indy_swim/status/1379909738188656645?s=21
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/04/06/uk-growth-tipped-outstrip-us-europe/
Britain will clock up faster economic growth than the US and Europe next year as the recovery is turbocharged by the country's world-leading vaccination scheme and a Treasury spending spree, the International Monetary Fund has said...
Paging @Mexicanpete
GB and NI are now legally separate from a customs perspective. I need to apply for an export licence to ship products to NI from GB, I do not inside GB. Philip can mock and laugh and cite whatever nonsense he likes. The UK government are clear that NI is not in customs union with GB as any trader knows very well.
If Philip wants to disagree with the UK government on this issue then perhaps we just let him and move on.
The NI Protocol was quite clever. If there's no societal difficulties likely to persist from the Protocol then who cares, life goes on.
If there are societal difficulties likely to persist then the Protocol Article 16 gives the UK (and the EU) unilateral rights to do whatever it considers necessary to resolve those difficulties.
So either way we have no issue. If there's no difficulties there's no problem. If there are difficulties (and everyone agrees there are) we invoke Article 16 and move on.
That's why it was clever negotiations.
https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1364693472503070731
They're only separated de facto by decisions taken within the Protocol Article 5 that can be replaced under Protocol Article 16 if there are societal difficulties.
So the question to answer is are there societal difficulties, yes or no? If yes, invoke Article 16 and move on. If no, what's the problem?
Which is it?
Only were the UK to start being awkward with imports does the EU need to start playing fair. At the moment they've spent months discouraging fresh food imports without anyone in the UK doing anything that would impact equivalent EU companies.
It's not officially an export ban, but it's not exactly free trade: It's the murky EU vaccine export strategy.
According to EU officials and diplomats, Brussels is pressuring vaccine makers to reprioritize shipments to the EU, even if that means other countries, such as Australia, will suffer additional delays. But it's not technically banning those exports.
In the latest episode of the EU's vaccine procurement drama, Australian government officials on Tuesday claimed the EU had effectively blocked millions of doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. The allegation contradicted the European Commission, which on Wednesday again insisted it had so far only blocked a single shipment to Australia of 250,000 doses. Observers and journalists scrambled to find out which side was right.
It turns out, both were.
While the EU officially hasn't blocked more vaccine shipments, it has been leaning on vaccine producers to send doses to the EU instead of other countries.
Effectively, that means the EU has managed to stop more vaccine exports than those it has officially halted, officials in Brussels and Australia said.
Australia, for instance, has not received any Oxford/AstraZeneca shipments from the EU since February, according to Canberra, even as the EU continued to receive doses (though far fewer than the company had originally promised).
https://www.politico.eu/article/vaccine-export-block-europe-coronavirus-astrazeneca/
Firstly let us broadly categorise Labour as centre left-authoritarian (Well they are supporting most covid measures at the moment), the Lib Dems as centre left-libertarian and the greens as well left.
Further the Tories as right authoritarian and Reform as Right-libertarian
The right wing vote is split 29/3 whereas the left is split 44/11/11. That leaves London as broadly a 2/3 left / 1/3 right city.
But the right wing vote is entirely consolidated behind the Tories (91%) whereas Labour has 67% of the left vote.
Perhaps the most important by-election in the last few years was Peterborough, a Brexit party win would have I think irretrievably split the right vote away from the Tories particularly after the disastrous european elections.
I know that's oversimplified but it could be a looming issue for Labour in what should be natural left leaning future city heartlands whereas rural England and Wales are almost entirely behind the Tories.
In fact I get your position completely, but let’s take the lipstick off the pig. The EU’s biggest red line in Brexit was to protect the integrity of their single market. Since all sides – absolutely everyone - agreed there mustn’t under any circumstances be a border in Ireland it meant a border in the Irish Sea. That solemn undertaking was expressed in the Protocol. Letter and spirit.
You are saying we should renege on this. We should now refuse to implement the Irish Sea border and present them with a ‘devil and deep blue sea’ choice – put up a border in Ireland after all or accept a violation of the integrity of the single market. Which, I repeat, was their biggest red line, perhaps their one and only genuine red line.
“Tough,” you might say. Or “Cool, we win!” We protect the UK single market and if they put a border across Ireland and it causes trouble that’s “on them” (to use the rather chippy phrase that the more bumptious Leavers seem to like). Also “on them” if they choose to live with a hole in their single market. Ditto if they take us to court and get embroiled in that for years. All on them.
And you’re right in a sense. It is on them. It’s on them for assuming that the UK government was negotiating the Brexit deal in good faith. For assuming that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were not a political incarnation of Delboy and Rodney.
But now they know better, and so does the rest of the world. It’s a “win” at the price of looking like a rogue nation that has chosen to defect from normal good practice in international affairs and instead conduct itself according to the grubby character of the individual who just happens to be our PM at this moment.
Yay.
Would be amusing if Galloway got in on the list but Salmond did not
Still, I'm sure Sir Keir will relish the opportunity to make a fourth impression at that point...
https://twitter.com/Cox_A_R/status/1380116887523229699?s=20
The NI Protocol gave conditions so long as they did not cause societal difficulties. I'm not saying we should be a "rogue nation" I'm saying we should exercise powers they agreed to in the Protocol. Be very solemn and sober and say things like "with deep regret there are ongoing societal problems that are likely to persist. The safety, security of Northern Ireland and the peace process must always come first, as both the UK and EU agreed, so with deep regret we need to invoke Article 16 to resolve these issues. This will be a temporary invocation until the UK and EU, in talks with all affected communities, can come to a solution that respects the peace process."
Don't be jingoistic and say "we win", that's between us, just keep being sombre and emphasising the peace process first and foremost. This is purely to ensure peace.
Who around the world would think we're grubby for putting peace first? The EU should have seen this coming before the Protocol was signed, many warned that there would be societal difficulties if this happened, but now that the warnings have come true the responsible thing to do is put peace first.
That's it really.
This is your Yawm Ashura so enjoy.
Crucially our JCVI and MHRA are linked up, the EU has no JCVI sole equivalent.
Bollocks to all this "red line holding", "legalistic" "rules-based organisation" crapola about the EU.
The EU is nothing of the sort. It bends and breaks rules all the time. From the Fiskal Kompakt to Spitzenkandidat, from letting Greece in the euro to shattering the rules on ECB borrowing to the smuggling of the EU Constitution past the voters by ignoring referendums, it is a grotesque bureaucratic racket. Fuck the EU. They are owed no debt of honour, the word is not in the EU lexicon.
What the EU is, however, is a pragmatic, slow-moving entity which serves to increase the wealth of its major states, especially France and Germany, even if it sometimes fails at this, quite badly.
It is time for that pragmatism to take over. If they can adopt an entire Constitution via a swindle, they can ignore a few chocolate hobnobs crossing a customs desk in Carrickfergus
Great place to live though.
And currently our lack of a scheme isn't impacting the EU's exporters but their lack of a scheme is impacting ours.
Innit.
By having scientists who are clear, up front and honest with the public is why Britons trust the process more than other nations. No stupid leaks, no fake news. Just the truth, unvarnished, given to us with transparency.
That's one thing not taken into account in their risk chart.
How likely were the people who had bad reactions to the vaccine to have bad reactions to the virus?
We can't be sure their risks were the same as the general population.
Currently the EU believes it is in their best interest that no chocolate hobnobs enter the EU (including Northern Ireland) without a whole lot of extra paperwork.
The question is how do you change the game so it's in the EU's interest to ignore those hobnobs and I really don't think there is a way of doing so that Boris could politically accept.
https://twitter.com/bhgreeley/status/1379766072530853891