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
?! What nonsense. The MHRA have played a completely straight and sensible bat with regards to vaccinations.
Let's wait and see. If there is no uptick in vaccine hesitancy as a result of this, I have offered to pour mild curry sauce on my gonads. Which I think is fair. If, however, vax skepticism DOES increase, then you have to hit your genitals repeatedly with a boomerang. At noon. Half way down Piccadilly
Deal?
The counterfactual isn't that there is a (tiny tiny) problem with the AZ vaccine though, it's a massive cover up. That wouldn't end well.
No, the sensible thing would be this: admit there is evidence of a very very rare but dangerous side effect, but then say the benefits to the country of the whole population being vaccinated ASAP far outweigh this tiny risk, so keep calm and carry on as before, the vaccine is safe, but of course we will keep monitoring everything closely
Job done. No lies told. No cover up
Bluf. Medical risks low, but perceptions and messaging vital to get right.
The Sun and other newspapers got it wrong, ramming the blatant spin approach isn’t going to convince people. The hand of silly nationalism was behind today’s silly headlines. The more persuasive approach would have been to have stuck with the truth, rapid reaction on a balanced and targeted approach to help those with greater risk of vaccine issue who have less issue of covid at same time. Overall figures including everyone should not have been used, quick and targeted measures to protect those most at risk, also due to the wonderful fact there are other options should have been the story and the headlines from broadcast media/24 to paper.
It’s shocking that when there is a nationalistic angle on vaccines, being able to play it straight goes out the window.
The truth is we have already long passed the point of sharing, the nationalism has ensured this mistake, because the longer it’s out there in the rest of the world mutating the bigger the threat it is to us and what we are doing.
For me this has NOTHING to do with nationalism. I would be saying almost the exact same thing if the EMA was dissing and restricting Pfizer because of a vanishingly rare side effect. The only reason I am even angrier that they've done this to AZ is because it is the vaccine that is meant to save the world: cheap, not for profit, store it in a fridge. Bingo. And yet, today, even developing countries like the Philippines are severely restricting AZ. How many Filipinos will die as a result? How many more mutations will emerge as the pandemic is prolonged?
But I have now made my point several times, and I shall engage myself with coffee
A lot of Sarwar's approvals come from SNP voters who like him but prefer Sturgeon. That seems to be his problem: everyone likes him - but not as much as they like someone else. Labour will only move into second with switches from the SNP. They look very unlikely this time round.
In the relatively near future, being 'liked but not Sturgeon' could be a winning lottery ticket. It's a waiting game.
I'm not one for 'keep them in power to own their failure', I think wrong-uns being in power is rarely a good thing, but there are some serious chickens coming home to roost for the SNP, and I don't actually think a weak, cobbled-together Tory/Lab administration would be of huge benefit at the moment. Let the SNP take power again, hopefully weakened, and watch the whole thing disintegrate.
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
?! What nonsense. The MHRA have played a completely straight and sensible bat with regards to vaccinations.
Let's wait and see. If there is no uptick in vaccine hesitancy as a result of this, I have offered to pour mild curry sauce on my gonads. Which I think is fair. If, however, vax skepticism DOES increase, then you have to hit your genitals repeatedly with a boomerang. At noon. Half way down Piccadilly
Deal?
The counterfactual isn't that there is a (tiny tiny) problem with the AZ vaccine though, it's a massive cover up. That wouldn't end well.
It's also impossible. No way a cover up would stick. It's completely unethical to recommend a vaccine (any medication/intervention) where the risks appear to outweigh the benefits. To believe that everyone with access to the data would toe the line is fantasy. Even if they did, there are other teams, other countries. Any cover up would - rightly - fail and no one would trust any vaccine or medication in this country ever again. And with good reason.
We have trust in vaccinations here for a reason: the people making the recommendations are competent and trustworthy. Undo that and we've got far bigger problems than a few Covid vaccine refusers.
I agree but think it could have been handled better with a simple provision change in the system and a press release rather than a big public press conference. A proper paper explaining the risk differential would have been fine.
The problem with that idea, is that
- The anti-vax types would have kicked off when they noticed. - The press would have demanded answers
... and we would have ended up with the press conference we had yesterday, from a worse starting position.
You really think people would have drilled into the detail of "low exposure risk" of "2 in 10,000" in a "certain age group" and then gone AHA when they noticed the figures 1.1 against 0.8???
They would not. And besides, even if they did (and they wouldn't) the JCVI would just say yes we said there is a miniscule risk, but the benefits of everyone getting vaxed ASAP outweigh these tiny risks, in terms of transmission, suppression, countering hesitancy. And that would be entirely reasonable as a response
Instead the British government has announced a British vaccine is dangerous, That is the signal going around the world. It is monumental folly. I hope my fears are wrong.
I don't know about the rest of the world but as I said yesterday, over here the only people getting excited by it are those who were already not inclined to get the vaccine. I'm not sure it's going to make a huge amount of difference and for the under 30s group in general they've raised the value of the other three vaccines so all things being rational it may actually increase vaccination rates for that group.
"all things being rational" is doing a lot of work there, and is probably not up to the onerous tasks assigned
A lot of Sarwar's approvals come from SNP voters who like him but prefer Sturgeon. That seems to be his problem: everyone likes him - but not as much as they like someone else. Labour will only move into second with switches from the SNP. They look very unlikely this time round.
Correct - the likeliest outcome seesm to be some reshuffling among a slightly lower unionist total. Worst of all possible worlds and caused by an unwillingness to vote tactically right when appropriate.
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.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
Its graduates include Mr Macron himself and ex-presidents François Hollande and Jacques Chirac.
Pulling up that ladder, eh?
Ah, Macron's levelling up down agenda.
Great news for Oxbridge, Harvard etc...
They aren't competing for the same students. It would be almost impossible for a non native French speaker to complete the 2 year classe prépa for Grande écoles nevermind the fiercely competitive entrance exam.
It's only ENA that's shutting down not the other GEs.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Why should it have been Peace in Ireland when that clearly wasn't the UK's greatest priority
It’s shocking that when there is a nationalistic angle on vaccines, being able to play it straight goes out the window.
The truth is we have already long passed the point of sharing, the nationalism has ensured this mistake, because the longer it’s out there in the rest of the world mutating the bigger the threat it is to us and what we are doing.
The nationalistic angle on vaccines is that we have a national interest in reaching herd immunity so that we can get our economy functioning again without people dying.
Your second point is logically wrong. Sharing an insignificant number of vaccines does nothing to reduce the risk of mutations elsewhere.
Its graduates include Mr Macron himself and ex-presidents François Hollande and Jacques Chirac.
Pulling up that ladder, eh?
Ah, Macron's levelling up down agenda.
Great news for Oxbridge, Harvard etc...
They aren't competing for the same students. It would be almost impossible for a non native French speaker to complete the 2 year classe prépa for Grande écoles nevermind the fiercely competitive entrance exam.
It's only ENA that's shutting down not the other GEs.
The speed with which the same networks will form in a different French institution will, I predict, be inspiring.
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.
Surely a trusted trader scheme includes everyone you trust... not the firms a politician chooses...
Well precisely. Plus there should be a mechanism for new forms to be added to the list rather automatically so long as they meet predetermined criteria - and a way for them to be stripped of that status if they're deemed untrustworthy for some reason.
I think it is very likely that Labour will beat the Tories this time out. As a Unionist I am much more interested in the overall situation between the groupings than how the vote is divided within them. I wish Sarwar every success in regaining votes and hopefully seats in Glasgow.
Douglas Ross is proving a bit rubbish, I notice SCons have put Ruth Davidson front and centre recently in this campaign.
A wise move.
I said at the time that Ross attacking Nippie on grounds of honesty and propriety was ludicrous. Now that she has been cleared and is rock solid in place the Tory attack appears even sillier as it fades into the background. That they have been reduced to sticking Baroness Chickenrun on their leaflets just makes it funnier.
If one had wanted to achieve “no deal” this was certainly the way to do it. Sign a deal only moderately different from no deal in operation, heavily focused on goods, then blow up NI and chuck it in the bin, using Covid to mask the disruption and get you through to a point that it’s all in the past and you can blame any business closures on Covid and move on.
I said yesterday that the pauses in the use of AZ have likely already cost more lives than could potentially be saved from avoiding clots. Add on the inevitable increase in vaccine hesitancy, and resulting increased transmission and cases, and we are going to end up in a situation where many times more people die as a result.
I agree, but as others have said we are hampered by a degree of triumphalism in earlier Government and Oxford pronouncements on the AZ vaccine. If the tone had been sober throughout, then merely saying that for the youngest cohort the latest findings suggest that Pfizer is best would not cause more than a ripple. Because we've gone overboard with "Oxford/AZ is a British triumph and the EU are mad to be cautious about it", it looks like a U-turn to say "Um, well, maybe we should be a bit cautious, but just for young people".
It's not too late to correct. Simply saying that "All the vaccines have excellent effectiveness and safety. As knowledge develops we are fine-tuning vaccinations, and current advice is that AZ is suitable for all age groups over 30, while Pfizer is best for under-30s and suitable for all age groups" sounds like a careful rational judgment. No need to be defensive or hyperbolic about it. People want boring, convincing advice.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
That would have been asking rather a lot. They are not as big a stakeholder in the GFA peace process as we are. Important to them, yes, but the Single Market is their very life & soul.
I think it is very likely that Labour will beat the Tories this time out. As a Unionist I am much more interested in the overall situation between the groupings than how the vote is divided within them. I wish Sarwar every success in regaining votes and hopefully seats in Glasgow.
Douglas Ross is proving a bit rubbish, I notice SCons have put Ruth Davidson front and centre recently in this campaign.
A wise move.
I said at the time that Ross attacking Nippie on grounds of honesty and propriety was ludicrous. Now that she has been cleared and is rock solid in place the Tory attack appears even sillier as it fades into the background. That they have been reduced to sticking Baroness Chickenrun on their leaflets just makes it funnier.
He doesnt need to, the vicar of Bath is on the case accusing her of trousering £600k. More mud and some of it will stick.
She hasn't been cleared, RP is deliberately misrepresenting the facts to suit his (bizarrely) favourable to the SNP schtick. I expect this to last a relatively short period into his residence in Scotland, where he'll gradually realise what the SNP are actually all about.
She *has* been cleared politically. Thats the conclusion of the *cough* independent legal report. The Tories totally overplayed their hand, leaked claims that were disproven in the legal findings, and now want people to vote for them not the SNP on the grounds of trust and propriety. It was a classic clusterfuck tactic which has spectacularly backfired. Whatever smoke is still billowing about (and there is plenty of smoke) is being wafted away as partisan.
As for me being "bizarrely favourable" I am just saying what I see. I am (or will be once the snow clears) campaigning for the LibDems so I have no truck for Nippie. But it is what it is. She will win a majority and the Tories are heading to lose seats.
Brave man trying to help the perennial no hopers, led by an absolute roaster.
A lot of Sarwar's approvals come from SNP voters who like him but prefer Sturgeon. That seems to be his problem: everyone likes him - but not as much as they like someone else. Labour will only move into second with switches from the SNP. They look very unlikely this time round.
In the relatively near future, being 'liked but not Sturgeon' could be a winning lottery ticket. It's a waiting game.
I'm not one for 'keep them in power to own their failure', I think wrong-uns being in power is rarely a good thing, but there are some serious chickens coming home to roost for the SNP, and I don't actually think a weak, cobbled-together Tory/Lab administration would be of huge benefit at the moment. Let the SNP take power again, hopefully weakened, and watch the whole thing disintegrate.
If Labour don't embrace independence then they have no hope of ever getting anything back other than some weak Tories. As long as he is a lickspittle nodding dog for London HQ he has no hope whatsoever.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
The self defined sensible Remainers could have ensured this problem didn't exist by voting for Mrs May's deal - they had been elected in 2017 on a pledge to respect the referendum result, why did they take a punt on getting it overturned?
Good grief. It's electoral politicking, as you well know. The Scot Tories think their best selling point is preventing a divisive referendum, so they're banging that drum, they know full well the evil English in Westmonster won't actually allow a vote.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
I said yesterday that the pauses in the use of AZ have likely already cost more lives than could potentially be saved from avoiding clots. Add on the inevitable increase in vaccine hesitancy, and resulting increased transmission and cases, and we are going to end up in a situation where many times more people die as a result.
The French do seem very worried indeed about a very small chance of a blood clot. Either durex sales are going to do very well there indeed or French nunneries and monasteries can expect to increase their cloistered ranks.
If one had wanted to achieve “no deal” this was certainly the way to do it. Sign a deal only moderately different from no deal in operation, heavily focused on goods, then blow up NI and chuck it in the bin, using Covid to mask the disruption and get you through to a point that it’s all in the past and you can blame any business closures on Covid and move on.
In my view it's essentially daring the EU to blow up the EU-UK FTA over what is (for them) a minor inconvenience.
Ultimately it all comes down to the point that some terrorist groups will cause trouble if there are significant NI-RoI borders, and their opposing terrorist groups are going to cause trouble because of the NI-GB borders.
There is fundamentally no way to make both sides happy (while only one of UK/RoI are in the single market) unless there is another classic NI fudge, where Stormont, Dublin, and London agree to lower the intensity of customs (and let the drug smuggling flow again) leaving the EU as the only aggrieved party, but as mentioned before, possibly not aggrieved enough to blow up the entire FTA over it.
I said yesterday that the pauses in the use of AZ have likely already cost more lives than could potentially be saved from avoiding clots. Add on the inevitable increase in vaccine hesitancy, and resulting increased transmission and cases, and we are going to end up in a situation where many times more people die as a result.
I agree, but as others have said we are hampered by a degree of triumphalism in earlier Government and Oxford pronouncements on the AZ vaccine. If the tone had been sober throughout, then merely saying that for the youngest cohort the latest findings suggest that Pfizer is best would not cause more than a ripple. Because we've gone overboard with "Oxford/AZ is a British triumph and the EU are mad to be cautious about it", it looks like a U-turn to say "Um, well, maybe we should be a bit cautious, but just for young people".
It's not too late to correct. Simply saying that "All the vaccines have excellent effectiveness and safety. As knowledge develops we are fine-tuning vaccinations, and current advice is that AZ is suitable for all age groups over 30, while Pfizer is best for under-30s and suitable for all age groups" sounds like a careful rational judgment. No need to be defensive or hyperbolic about it. People want boring, convincing advice.
Something in your argument, however it has to be seen in context: the British "nationalism" about AZ came as a response to some pretty outrageous smears from the EU, Macron calling it quasi-ineffective, Handelsblatt and the health spokesman with the "8% effective" bollocks, plus all kinds of aggressions from Brussels, accusations of Britain hoarding AZ vaccines, raids on AZ vaccine factories, on and on
We tried to stay as cool, as possible, in response, but it is understandable that some people got a bit punchy
Anyway we are where we are, and it is not good
Here are some Spanish experts saying the restriction in AZ now makes it difficult for the country to jab 70% by the summer as planned. All this nonsense will have real effects
A lot of Sarwar's approvals come from SNP voters who like him but prefer Sturgeon. That seems to be his problem: everyone likes him - but not as much as they like someone else. Labour will only move into second with switches from the SNP. They look very unlikely this time round.
Correct - the likeliest outcome seesm to be some reshuffling among a slightly lower unionist total. Worst of all possible worlds and caused by an unwillingness to vote tactically right when appropriate.
No doubt the Germans will ban it as soon as arrives
I would guess some analysis to determine exactly how its characteristics differ would be in order. Exactly what is Uncle Vova trying to get us to inject into our deltoids?
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
Yes. She made a deal that was so weak that the nasty Brexiteers wouldn't vote for it, and which respected the delicacy of the Irish border problem. Would it really have been so bad for Remain MP's, elected on a pledge to respect the referendum result, to have swallowed their pride and voted for it, rather than gamble on getting, then winning, a second referendum, the ridiculous "People's Vote"?
Then along came Boris, and that was that. Huge Con Maj instead of weak deal with the DUP, and Boris's Brexit instead of Theresa's compromise
Does that actually say they think it would be a mandate for one, or just that the SNP will hold one if they win a majority?
I do think it would be a mandate, and at best it is carelessly worded, but I'm not sure Mr Meeks is right it is an admission of mandate, just admission of practical reality. He does tend to get overexcited.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
That's where May went wrong.
She made it her #1 priority, fair enough if the EU reciprocated. They didn't.
That meant the UK was the one expected to make every compromise for peace.
It takes two to tango. Once one party abandoned peace as the priority, which the EU did, the other party is right to reciprocate.
You don't tackle an absence of peace from the opposite side with pacifism on your own side.
Its graduates include Mr Macron himself and ex-presidents François Hollande and Jacques Chirac.
Pulling up that ladder, eh?
Ah, Macron's levelling up down agenda.
Great news for Oxbridge, Harvard etc...
They aren't competing for the same students. It would be almost impossible for a non native French speaker to complete the 2 year classe prépa for Grande écoles nevermind the fiercely competitive entrance exam.
It's only ENA that's shutting down not the other GEs.
The speed with which the same networks will form in a different French institution will, I predict, be inspiring.
There are another 10 Instituts d'études politiques apart from ENA in the GE system. One of those, probably IEP Paris, will become the new ENA.
Entrance to ENA was reserved for those who scored highest on the banque tests which means everyone who went there was academically brilliant with a bottomless appetite fir hard work. Students spend TWO YEARS preparing for the test which takes place over two weeks. If you have an institution exclusively populated by workaholic geniuses it's not surprising that a certain unhealthy elitism will surface.
ENA had to go because it became an agoge for a disconnected managerial class that ran the French state.
That they will hold a referendum doesn’t mean the tories agree they would have a mandate to do it.
A majority in a parliament for a particular policy is usually defined as a mandate. Presumably you mean a body from outside Scotland without a mandate in Scotland would cotinue blocking it?
Its graduates include Mr Macron himself and ex-presidents François Hollande and Jacques Chirac.
Pulling up that ladder, eh?
Ah, Macron's levelling up down agenda.
Great news for Oxbridge, Harvard etc...
They aren't competing for the same students. It would be almost impossible for a non native French speaker to complete the 2 year classe prépa for Grande écoles nevermind the fiercely competitive entrance exam.
It's only ENA that's shutting down not the other GEs.
The speed with which the same networks will form in a different French institution will, I predict, be inspiring.
There are another 10 Instituts d'études politiques apart from ENA in the GE system. One of those, probably IEP Paris, will become the new ENA.
Entrance to ENA was reserved for those who scored highest on the banque tests which means everyone who went there was academically brilliant with a bottomless appetite fir hard work. Students spend TWO YEARS preparing for the test which takes place over two weeks. If you have an institution exclusively populated by workaholic geniuses it's not surprising that a certain unhealthy elitism will surface.
ENA had to go because it became an agoge for a disconnected managerial class that ran the French state.
One of the problems with ENA is that it churns out brilliant technocrats who often turn out, in real life, to be fairly useless. Over-educated
Does that actually say they think it would be a mandate for one, or just that the SNP will hold one if they win a majority?
I do think it would be a mandate, and at best it is carelessly worded, but I'm not sure Mr Meeks is right it is an admission of mandate, just admission of practical reality.
It does seem to imply that the Tory party would accept one will occur if they win those 4 seats.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
That's where May went wrong.
She made it her #1 priority, fair enough if the EU reciprocated. They didn't.
That meant the UK was the one expected to make every compromise for peace.
It takes two to tango. Once one party abandoned peace as the priority, which the EU did, the other party is right to reciprocate.
You don't tackle an absence of peace from the opposite side with pacifism on your own side.
Paging @Yokes. Why did you take umbrage to my uninformed rubbish last night, but have absolutely no problem with a scandalously moronic post like Mr Thompson's above?
That they will hold a referendum doesn’t mean the tories agree they would have a mandate to do it.
A majority in a parliament for a particular policy is usually defined as a mandate. Presumably you mean a body from outside Scotland without a mandate in Scotland would be blocking it?
I thought you lot were all for changing definitions * cough* generation *cough*
Its graduates include Mr Macron himself and ex-presidents François Hollande and Jacques Chirac.
Pulling up that ladder, eh?
Ah, Macron's levelling up down agenda.
Great news for Oxbridge, Harvard etc...
They aren't competing for the same students. It would be almost impossible for a non native French speaker to complete the 2 year classe prépa for Grande écoles nevermind the fiercely competitive entrance exam.
It's only ENA that's shutting down not the other GEs.
The speed with which the same networks will form in a different French institution will, I predict, be inspiring.
There are another 10 Instituts d'études politiques apart from ENA in the GE system. One of those, probably IEP Paris, will become the new ENA.
Entrance to ENA was reserved for those who scored highest on the banque tests which means everyone who went there was academically brilliant with a bottomless appetite fir hard work. Students spend TWO YEARS preparing for the test which takes place over two weeks. If you have an institution exclusively populated by workaholic geniuses it's not surprising that a certain unhealthy elitism will surface.
ENA had to go because it became an agoge for a disconnected managerial class that ran the French state.
One of the problems with ENA is that it churns out brilliant technocrats who often turn out, in real life, to be fairly useless. Over-educated
No, not over educated. No such thing.
Just educated in the wrong things.
Among other things, they aren't much use as technocrats when they don't understand technology....
If one had wanted to achieve “no deal” this was certainly the way to do it. Sign a deal only moderately different from no deal in operation, heavily focused on goods, then blow up NI and chuck it in the bin, using Covid to mask the disruption and get you through to a point that it’s all in the past and you can blame any business closures on Covid and move on.
In my view it's essentially daring the EU to blow up the EU-UK FTA over what is (for them) a minor inconvenience.
Ultimately it all comes down to the point that some terrorist groups will cause trouble if there are significant NI-RoI borders, and their opposing terrorist groups are going to cause trouble because of the NI-GB borders.
There is fundamentally no way to make both sides happy (while only one of UK/RoI are in the single market) unless there is another classic NI fudge, where Stormont, Dublin, and London agree to lower the intensity of customs (and let the drug smuggling flow again) leaving the EU as the only aggrieved party, but as mentioned before, possibly not aggrieved enough to blow up the entire FTA over it.
Yeah I don’t disagree. In the end, some sort of solution will come about. Might need a nudge to both sides from a third party like the US though.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
Yes. She made a deal that was so weak that the nasty Brexiteers wouldn't vote for it, and which respected the delicacy of the Irish border problem. Would it really have been so bad for Remain MP's, elected on a pledge to respect the referendum result, to have swallowed their pride and voted for it, rather than gamble on getting, then winning, a second referendum, the ridiculous "People's Vote"?
Then along came Boris, and that was that. Huge Con Maj instead of weak deal with the DUP, and Boris's Brexit instead of Theresa's compromise
The Remain MPs didn't gamble on *getting* a second referendum. They seemed to hope that one would be *given* to them. Perhaps a watery tart would start standing out referendums, down at the lake?
If they had *tried* to get a second referendum, with those vote things in Parliament, now that would have been a different matter.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
Yes. She made a deal that was so weak that the nasty Brexiteers wouldn't vote for it, and which respected the delicacy of the Irish border problem. Would it really have been so bad for Remain MP's, elected on a pledge to respect the referendum result, to have swallowed their pride and voted for it, rather than gamble on getting, then winning, a second referendum, the ridiculous "People's Vote"?
Then along came Boris, and that was that. Huge Con Maj instead of weak deal with the DUP, and Boris's Brexit instead of Theresa's compromise
The Remain MPs didn't gamble on *getting* a second referendum. They seemed to hope that one would be *given* to them. Perhaps a watery tart would start standing out referendums, down at the lake?
If they had *tried* to get a second referendum, with those vote things in Parliament, now that would have been a different matter.
Funny to recall the serious faces of Remain MPs as they continually voted down every single option, whilst saying they respected the Leave vote!
Its graduates include Mr Macron himself and ex-presidents François Hollande and Jacques Chirac.
Pulling up that ladder, eh?
Ah, Macron's levelling up down agenda.
Great news for Oxbridge, Harvard etc...
They aren't competing for the same students. It would be almost impossible for a non native French speaker to complete the 2 year classe prépa for Grande écoles nevermind the fiercely competitive entrance exam.
It's only ENA that's shutting down not the other GEs.
The speed with which the same networks will form in a different French institution will, I predict, be inspiring.
There are another 10 Instituts d'études politiques apart from ENA in the GE system. One of those, probably IEP Paris, will become the new ENA.
Entrance to ENA was reserved for those who scored highest on the banque tests which means everyone who went there was academically brilliant with a bottomless appetite fir hard work. Students spend TWO YEARS preparing for the test which takes place over two weeks. If you have an institution exclusively populated by workaholic geniuses it's not surprising that a certain unhealthy elitism will surface.
ENA had to go because it became an agoge for a disconnected managerial class that ran the French state.
One of the problems with ENA is that it churns out brilliant technocrats who often turn out, in real life, to be fairly useless. Over-educated
No, not over educated. No such thing.
Just educated in the wrong things.
Among other things, they aren't much use as technocrats when they don't understand technology....
Yes, over-educated. Like hot house flowers
Another problem is that they are all educated in the same high pressure and technocratical way, meaning they all think the same way. So they will all approach the same problem with the same solution. it is better to have a variety of opinion
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
That's where May went wrong.
She made it her #1 priority, fair enough if the EU reciprocated. They didn't.
That meant the UK was the one expected to make every compromise for peace.
It takes two to tango. Once one party abandoned peace as the priority, which the EU did, the other party is right to reciprocate.
You don't tackle an absence of peace from the opposite side with pacifism on your own side.
Paging @Yokes. Why did you take umbrage to my uninformed rubbish last night, but have absolutely no problem with a scandalously moronic post like Mr Thompson's above?
It isn't scandalously moronic it is deeply realistic, which is why you have no reply.
If one party insists peace must come first under all circumstances, while the other party does not, then the second party is simply holding a gun to the head of the first.
Either BOTH parties put peace first, or neither can.
Does that actually say they think it would be a mandate for one, or just that the SNP will hold one if they win a majority?
I do think it would be a mandate, and at best it is carelessly worded, but I'm not sure Mr Meeks is right it is an admission of mandate, just admission of practical reality.
It does seem to imply that the Tory party would accept one will occur if they win those 4 seats.
Yes, but that's not the same as accepting there is a mandate, which was the claim, just accepting it will happen. Its minor, but I do think it's an untrue claim based on that tweet, and I'd bet Alistair knows that but enjoys trolling people (then pretending he isnt)
But mandate doesnt really mean anything anyway. Governments claim it all the time and oppositions say the former dont have it, and everyone moves goalposts to justify that.
It's a near certainty that Sindy backers will have a majority at Holyrood again, possibly the SNP on their own would, which is a pretty clear mandate as these things go, but that won't matter to Boris. Likewise if by some miracle they didn't get a majority I'm sure the SNP could argue mandate based on being largest party and 50/50 polling.
Its graduates include Mr Macron himself and ex-presidents François Hollande and Jacques Chirac.
Pulling up that ladder, eh?
Ah, Macron's levelling up down agenda.
Great news for Oxbridge, Harvard etc...
They aren't competing for the same students. It would be almost impossible for a non native French speaker to complete the 2 year classe prépa for Grande écoles nevermind the fiercely competitive entrance exam.
It's only ENA that's shutting down not the other GEs.
The speed with which the same networks will form in a different French institution will, I predict, be inspiring.
There are another 10 Instituts d'études politiques apart from ENA in the GE system. One of those, probably IEP Paris, will become the new ENA.
Entrance to ENA was reserved for those who scored highest on the banque tests which means everyone who went there was academically brilliant with a bottomless appetite fir hard work. Students spend TWO YEARS preparing for the test which takes place over two weeks. If you have an institution exclusively populated by workaholic geniuses it's not surprising that a certain unhealthy elitism will surface.
ENA had to go because it became an agoge for a disconnected managerial class that ran the French state.
One of the problems with ENA is that it churns out brilliant technocrats who often turn out, in real life, to be fairly useless. Over-educated
No, not over educated. No such thing.
Just educated in the wrong things.
Among other things, they aren't much use as technocrats when they don't understand technology....
Yes, over-educated. Like hot house flowers
Another problem is that they are all educated in the same high pressure and technocratical way, meaning they all think the same way. So they will all approach the same problem with the same solution. it is better to have a variety of opinion
If one had wanted to achieve “no deal” this was certainly the way to do it. Sign a deal only moderately different from no deal in operation, heavily focused on goods, then blow up NI and chuck it in the bin, using Covid to mask the disruption and get you through to a point that it’s all in the past and you can blame any business closures on Covid and move on.
In my view it's essentially daring the EU to blow up the EU-UK FTA over what is (for them) a minor inconvenience.
Ultimately it all comes down to the point that some terrorist groups will cause trouble if there are significant NI-RoI borders, and their opposing terrorist groups are going to cause trouble because of the NI-GB borders.
There is fundamentally no way to make both sides happy (while only one of UK/RoI are in the single market) unless there is another classic NI fudge, where Stormont, Dublin, and London agree to lower the intensity of customs (and let the drug smuggling flow again) leaving the EU as the only aggrieved party, but as mentioned before, possibly not aggrieved enough to blow up the entire FTA over it.
Yeah I don’t disagree. In the end, some sort of solution will come about. Might need a nudge to both sides from a third party like the US though.
I think the protocol could end up looking like a Pyrrhic victory for Irish diplomacy because their interests are no longer aligned with the rest of the EU on this.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
Yes. She made a deal that was so weak that the nasty Brexiteers wouldn't vote for it, and which respected the delicacy of the Irish border problem. Would it really have been so bad for Remain MP's, elected on a pledge to respect the referendum result, to have swallowed their pride and voted for it, rather than gamble on getting, then winning, a second referendum, the ridiculous "People's Vote"?
Then along came Boris, and that was that. Huge Con Maj instead of weak deal with the DUP, and Boris's Brexit instead of Theresa's compromise
The Remain MPs didn't gamble on *getting* a second referendum. They seemed to hope that one would be *given* to them. Perhaps a watery tart would start standing out referendums, down at the lake?
If they had *tried* to get a second referendum, with those vote things in Parliament, now that would have been a different matter.
Funny to recall the serious faces of Remain MPs as they continually voted down every single option, whilst saying they respected the Leave vote!
I'll be eternally grateful for those useful idiots in giving us exactly what we wanted.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
Yes. She made a deal that was so weak that the nasty Brexiteers wouldn't vote for it, and which respected the delicacy of the Irish border problem. Would it really have been so bad for Remain MP's, elected on a pledge to respect the referendum result, to have swallowed their pride and voted for it, rather than gamble on getting, then winning, a second referendum, the ridiculous "People's Vote"?
Then along came Boris, and that was that. Huge Con Maj instead of weak deal with the DUP, and Boris's Brexit instead of Theresa's compromise
The Remain MPs didn't gamble on *getting* a second referendum. They seemed to hope that one would be *given* to them. Perhaps a watery tart would start standing out referendums, down at the lake?
If they had *tried* to get a second referendum, with those vote things in Parliament, now that would have been a different matter.
Remember the closeness of the Customs Union vote? Heady times. It seemed to stun people that even with government playing possum no option got backing when parliament took control. Felt like there was no real plan B.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
That's where May went wrong.
She made it her #1 priority, fair enough if the EU reciprocated. They didn't.
That meant the UK was the one expected to make every compromise for peace.
It takes two to tango. Once one party abandoned peace as the priority, which the EU did, the other party is right to reciprocate.
You don't tackle an absence of peace from the opposite side with pacifism on your own side.
Paging @Yokes. Why did you take umbrage to my uninformed rubbish last night, but have absolutely no problem with a scandalously moronic post like Mr Thompson's above?
It isn't scandalously moronic it is deeply realistic, which is why you have no reply.
If one party insists peace must come first under all circumstances, while the other party does not, then the second party is simply holding a gun to the head of the first.
Either BOTH parties put peace first, or neither can.
I still can't get my head around the calm consideration you gave last year in your eloquent posts regarding the Trump peril. When it comes to anything associated with Johnson you just make up some fictional narrative to get your cheerleaders going. Chalk and cheese!
If one had wanted to achieve “no deal” this was certainly the way to do it. Sign a deal only moderately different from no deal in operation, heavily focused on goods, then blow up NI and chuck it in the bin, using Covid to mask the disruption and get you through to a point that it’s all in the past and you can blame any business closures on Covid and move on.
In my view it's essentially daring the EU to blow up the EU-UK FTA over what is (for them) a minor inconvenience.
Ultimately it all comes down to the point that some terrorist groups will cause trouble if there are significant NI-RoI borders, and their opposing terrorist groups are going to cause trouble because of the NI-GB borders.
There is fundamentally no way to make both sides happy (while only one of UK/RoI are in the single market) unless there is another classic NI fudge, where Stormont, Dublin, and London agree to lower the intensity of customs (and let the drug smuggling flow again) leaving the EU as the only aggrieved party, but as mentioned before, possibly not aggrieved enough to blow up the entire FTA over it.
Yeah I don’t disagree. In the end, some sort of solution will come about. Might need a nudge to both sides from a third party like the US though.
I think the protocol could end up looking like a Pyrrhic victory for Irish diplomacy because their interests are no longer aligned with the rest of the EU on this.
Agreed. It's like the story of Icarus. They came close to getting just what they wanted from May, but they flew too close to the Sun and it all fell apart.
If one had wanted to achieve “no deal” this was certainly the way to do it. Sign a deal only moderately different from no deal in operation, heavily focused on goods, then blow up NI and chuck it in the bin, using Covid to mask the disruption and get you through to a point that it’s all in the past and you can blame any business closures on Covid and move on.
In my view it's essentially daring the EU to blow up the EU-UK FTA over what is (for them) a minor inconvenience.
Ultimately it all comes down to the point that some terrorist groups will cause trouble if there are significant NI-RoI borders, and their opposing terrorist groups are going to cause trouble because of the NI-GB borders.
There is fundamentally no way to make both sides happy (while only one of UK/RoI are in the single market) unless there is another classic NI fudge, where Stormont, Dublin, and London agree to lower the intensity of customs (and let the drug smuggling flow again) leaving the EU as the only aggrieved party, but as mentioned before, possibly not aggrieved enough to blow up the entire FTA over it.
Yeah I don’t disagree. In the end, some sort of solution will come about. Might need a nudge to both sides from a third party like the US though.
I think the protocol could end up looking like a Pyrrhic victory for Irish diplomacy because their interests are no longer aligned with the rest of the EU on this.
Agreed. It's like the story of Icarus. They came close to getting just what they wanted from May, but they flew too close to the Sun and it all fell apart.
I'd hold back on the party poppers until any of that actually happens. While I think it is the likely outcome unfortunately it will take a lot of haggling and in all probability, murders, before we get there.
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.
Great place to live though.
I take it you're referring to London, not Northern Ireland?
We've had this discussion on here before. London is a curate's egg wrt quality of life. Greenwich, Chiswick, Richmond, Highgate - wonderful places. Catford, Lewisham, Stratford, Stockwell - I would rather live somewhere else. But then those choices may say as much about what I value.
It's with a certain sheepishness that I confess to never never never having set foot in Northern Ireland.
I worked there for a year. I wanted to see my tax money at work. It feels Scottish rather than English or Irish.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
That's where May went wrong.
She made it her #1 priority, fair enough if the EU reciprocated. They didn't.
That meant the UK was the one expected to make every compromise for peace.
It takes two to tango. Once one party abandoned peace as the priority, which the EU did, the other party is right to reciprocate.
You don't tackle an absence of peace from the opposite side with pacifism on your own side.
Paging @Yokes. Why did you take umbrage to my uninformed rubbish last night, but have absolutely no problem with a scandalously moronic post like Mr Thompson's above?
It isn't scandalously moronic it is deeply realistic, which is why you have no reply.
If one party insists peace must come first under all circumstances, while the other party does not, then the second party is simply holding a gun to the head of the first.
Either BOTH parties put peace first, or neither can.
I still can't get my head around the calm consideration you gave last year in your eloquent posts regarding the Trump peril. When it comes to anything associated with Johnson you just make up some fictional narrative to get your cheerleaders going. Chalk and cheese!
I was against Johnson when he was in May's Cabinet.
I'm of the strand that I want peace, but if we're pushed we need to push back. Peace is only viable if both parties want it, the EU rejected it as top priority first so we're right to protect our own interests like they do - nobody else will do it for us will they?
This gives a good indication as to why case numbers are now in free fall. Combined with those who have already had Covid there are many people who have immunity. As soon as they get the doses to get through the 30 to 49s then the risk ought to be tiny and it will be very hard for the virus to spread.
If one had wanted to achieve “no deal” this was certainly the way to do it. Sign a deal only moderately different from no deal in operation, heavily focused on goods, then blow up NI and chuck it in the bin, using Covid to mask the disruption and get you through to a point that it’s all in the past and you can blame any business closures on Covid and move on.
In my view it's essentially daring the EU to blow up the EU-UK FTA over what is (for them) a minor inconvenience.
Ultimately it all comes down to the point that some terrorist groups will cause trouble if there are significant NI-RoI borders, and their opposing terrorist groups are going to cause trouble because of the NI-GB borders.
There is fundamentally no way to make both sides happy (while only one of UK/RoI are in the single market) unless there is another classic NI fudge, where Stormont, Dublin, and London agree to lower the intensity of customs (and let the drug smuggling flow again) leaving the EU as the only aggrieved party, but as mentioned before, possibly not aggrieved enough to blow up the entire FTA over it.
Yeah I don’t disagree. In the end, some sort of solution will come about. Might need a nudge to both sides from a third party like the US though.
I think the protocol could end up looking like a Pyrrhic victory for Irish diplomacy because their interests are no longer aligned with the rest of the EU on this.
Agreed. It's like the story of Icarus. They came close to getting just what they wanted from May, but they flew too close to the Sun and it all fell apart.
I'd hold back on the party poppers until any of that actually happens. While I think it is the likely outcome, unfortunately it will take a lot of haggling, and in all probability, murders, before we get there.
If one had wanted to achieve “no deal” this was certainly the way to do it. Sign a deal only moderately different from no deal in operation, heavily focused on goods, then blow up NI and chuck it in the bin, using Covid to mask the disruption and get you through to a point that it’s all in the past and you can blame any business closures on Covid and move on.
In my view it's essentially daring the EU to blow up the EU-UK FTA over what is (for them) a minor inconvenience.
Ultimately it all comes down to the point that some terrorist groups will cause trouble if there are significant NI-RoI borders, and their opposing terrorist groups are going to cause trouble because of the NI-GB borders.
There is fundamentally no way to make both sides happy (while only one of UK/RoI are in the single market) unless there is another classic NI fudge, where Stormont, Dublin, and London agree to lower the intensity of customs (and let the drug smuggling flow again) leaving the EU as the only aggrieved party, but as mentioned before, possibly not aggrieved enough to blow up the entire FTA over it.
Yeah I don’t disagree. In the end, some sort of solution will come about. Might need a nudge to both sides from a third party like the US though.
I think the protocol could end up looking like a Pyrrhic victory for Irish diplomacy because their interests are no longer aligned with the rest of the EU on this.
Agreed. It's like the story of Icarus. They came close to getting just what they wanted from May, but they flew too close to the Sun and it all fell apart.
I'd hold back on the party poppers until any of that actually happens. While I think it is the likely outcome, unfortunately it will take a lot of haggling, and in all probability, murders, before we get there.
The Loyalist reactions to the Irish Sea Border make a united Ireland an evermore distant prospect. Because Irish people will look at the burning bus and think, if this is what they do when biscuits are delayed, imagine what might happen if we try to force them into being Irish not British
Any pressure for a reunification vote, such as there is, will dramatically recede
No doubt this is in the minds of the smarter people provoking the riots
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.
Great place to live though.
I take it you're referring to London, not Northern Ireland?
We've had this discussion on here before. London is a curate's egg wrt quality of life. Greenwich, Chiswick, Richmond, Highgate - wonderful places. Catford, Lewisham, Stratford, Stockwell - I would rather live somewhere else. But then those choices may say as much about what I value.
It's with a certain sheepishness that I confess to never never never having set foot in Northern Ireland.
I worked there for a year. I wanted to see my tax money at work. It feels Scottish rather than English or Irish.
I think it depends where in Northern Ireland you are. It will shift from Scottish to Irish as you approach the irish border...
No doubt the Germans will ban it as soon as arrives
I would guess some analysis to determine exactly how its characteristics differ would be in order. Exactly what is Uncle Vova trying to get us to inject into our deltoids?
I would be cautious if the new batch have a perfume like aroma!
The EU will just wait out the Johnson project at this point I think. They'll deal with whomever comes after on the basis that they almost certainly won't be a conceited shit surrendered by a coterie of brainfucked ball garglers.
After the UK Riots, the Irish Troubles and the Scottish banks, we have a new contender in the UK's habitual blame shifting/spreading stakes, 'The EU’s Brexit deal’.
The EU will just wait out the Johnson project at this point I think. They'll deal with whomever comes after on the basis that they almost certainly won't be a conceited shit surrendered by a coterie of brainfucked ball garglers.
We do not always see eye to eye. But respect for that
"Brainfucked ball garglers" is a splendid piece of phrasing
If one had wanted to achieve “no deal” this was certainly the way to do it. Sign a deal only moderately different from no deal in operation, heavily focused on goods, then blow up NI and chuck it in the bin, using Covid to mask the disruption and get you through to a point that it’s all in the past and you can blame any business closures on Covid and move on.
In my view it's essentially daring the EU to blow up the EU-UK FTA over what is (for them) a minor inconvenience.
Ultimately it all comes down to the point that some terrorist groups will cause trouble if there are significant NI-RoI borders, and their opposing terrorist groups are going to cause trouble because of the NI-GB borders.
There is fundamentally no way to make both sides happy (while only one of UK/RoI are in the single market) unless there is another classic NI fudge, where Stormont, Dublin, and London agree to lower the intensity of customs (and let the drug smuggling flow again) leaving the EU as the only aggrieved party, but as mentioned before, possibly not aggrieved enough to blow up the entire FTA over it.
Yeah I don’t disagree. In the end, some sort of solution will come about. Might need a nudge to both sides from a third party like the US though.
I think the protocol could end up looking like a Pyrrhic victory for Irish diplomacy because their interests are no longer aligned with the rest of the EU on this.
Of course not.
Coveney trashed the farm to get a big job and now the EU wont give it to him
So it was all down to Easter after all. Count me as not surprised...
The amount of bedwetting on here over a bank holiday dip was quite something.
I have had 2 sons get their second doses over 2 days recently - one of those was rung to come 4 weeks early - they are going gangbusters!!
It feels as if they have decided to go all-in on 2nd doses and get through them as quickly as possible at the complete expense of 1st doses. Then once they have done so they will go back to blasting through those remaining who have had no jabs.
Logically I think it makes sense now as those below 50 are statistically at lower risk than oldies with one jab. Even if as someone in their early 40s waiting for their jab it is very frustrating having to wait. I'm the only adult in my family who has not been jabbed now.
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
Just as it should have been for the UK government. To be fair to Theresa May, it was for her. Sadly, it was less of an issue for her successor.
Yes. She made a deal that was so weak that the nasty Brexiteers wouldn't vote for it, and which respected the delicacy of the Irish border problem. Would it really have been so bad for Remain MP's, elected on a pledge to respect the referendum result, to have swallowed their pride and voted for it, rather than gamble on getting, then winning, a second referendum, the ridiculous "People's Vote"?
Then along came Boris, and that was that. Huge Con Maj instead of weak deal with the DUP, and Boris's Brexit instead of Theresa's compromise
The Remain MPs didn't gamble on *getting* a second referendum. They seemed to hope that one would be *given* to them. Perhaps a watery tart would start standing out referendums, down at the lake?
If they had *tried* to get a second referendum, with those vote things in Parliament, now that would have been a different matter.
Funny to recall the serious faces of Remain MPs as they continually voted down every single option, whilst saying they respected the Leave vote!
I'll be eternally grateful for those useful idiots in giving us exactly what we wanted.
Have any of them admitted their strategy was a calamitous mistake yet? That they should have just accepted the public’s vote and made the best of it? The memoirs maybe
"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.
Ad that is the absolute heart of the problem.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
The self defined sensible Remainers could have ensured this problem didn't exist by voting for Mrs May's deal - they had been elected in 2017 on a pledge to respect the referendum result, why did they take a punt on getting it overturned?
Maybe they made the error of following the DUP in rejecting May's deal?
In this pretty grim debate what is being ignored about Boris's position with regard to the deal he struck is not: Is it perfect? But what, with relevant detail, could he have agreed which would be possible, better, gettable through parliament, respected the Referendum?
IMHO it is most likely that the deal done, with its essential re-doing which is now obvious, was about the best possible within the constraints. Personally i supported 'Norway for Now' but that would never get through the commons. Parliament had lots of chances to do better and rejected every option.
In the long run Boris may well have done the best possible.
This gives a good indication as to why case numbers are now in free fall. Combined with those who have already had Covid there are many people who have immunity. As soon as they get the doses to get through the 30 to 49s then the risk ought to be tiny and it will be very hard for the virus to spread.
The EU will just wait out the Johnson project at this point I think. They'll deal with whomever comes after on the basis that they almost certainly won't be a conceited shit surrendered by a coterie of brainfucked ball garglers.
That would be unlucky if it were to happen twice. One has to retain a little faith in Blighty.
In the long run Boris may well have done the best possible.
He literally threw NI under the bus to get the job he wanted.
He did the best possible for himself alone
Varadkar and Coventry threw NI under the bus in 2017 by cancelling the work done to ensure the border was not dramatised.
The Remain Parliament fanned the flames by rejecting every option available.
Boris did the right thing in getting Britain away from the wreckage. Now we can salvage and sooth NI which what should have happened before Varadkar, Coventry, Barnier and May created the clusterfuck.
In the long run Boris may well have done the best possible.
He literally threw NI under the bus to get the job he wanted.
He did the best possible for himself alone
Did he 'literally' thrown NI under the bus?
Or are you speaking figuratively?
On this subject, I enjoy hearing the word 'literally' misused as much as everyone else does. 'Literally' to mean 'figuratively' is of course quite old hat now, having been superseded a few years ago with literally in the sense of 'I can't imagine you wouldn't think I didn't mean this literally but will use it anyway', as in 'it was literally a nice light grey colour'. The kids nowadays are much more daring in their use of 'literally', employing it to mean 'er' - i.e. a placeholder in the flow of speech while the speaker lines up his next words, and occasionally to mean 'FFS', as in "Mum! Literally!"
The EU will just wait out the Johnson project at this point I think. They'll deal with whomever comes after on the basis that they almost certainly won't be a conceited shit surrendered by a coterie of brainfucked ball garglers.
And the better outcome the EU will be waiting for is what? On current red lines of all parties the current deal is the best available. What better deal will fit: No CU, no SM, a FTA, the GFA, no border in Ireland, and avoiding no deal? And also would get through the Commons.
I accept that at some point a red line(s) will have to go. But which? My preference - a united Ireland - is one of the infinity of options (along with every other) to which the DUP says No.
Comments
But I have now made my point several times, and I shall engage myself with coffee
I'm not one for 'keep them in power to own their failure', I think wrong-uns being in power is rarely a good thing, but there are some serious chickens coming home to roost for the SNP, and I don't actually think a weak, cobbled-together Tory/Lab administration would be of huge benefit at the moment. Let the SNP take power again, hopefully weakened, and watch the whole thing disintegrate.
The EU's "greatest priority" was "the integrity of the Single Market".
It should have been Peace in Ireland.
It's only ENA that's shutting down not the other GEs.
https://twitter.com/AlastairMeeks/status/1380140588083916801?s=20
It's not too late to correct. Simply saying that "All the vaccines have excellent effectiveness and safety. As knowledge develops we are fine-tuning vaccinations, and current advice is that AZ is suitable for all age groups over 30, while Pfizer is best for under-30s and suitable for all age groups" sounds like a careful rational judgment. No need to be defensive or hyperbolic about it. People want boring, convincing advice.
https://twitter.com/AlastairMeeks/status/1380140588083916801
As long as he is a lickspittle nodding dog for London HQ he has no hope whatsoever.
And FWIW he's the short odds favourite on Betfair.
Ultimately it all comes down to the point that some terrorist groups will cause trouble if there are significant NI-RoI borders, and their opposing terrorist groups are going to cause trouble because of the NI-GB borders.
There is fundamentally no way to make both sides happy (while only one of UK/RoI are in the single market) unless there is another classic NI fudge, where Stormont, Dublin, and London agree to lower the intensity of customs (and let the drug smuggling flow again) leaving the EU as the only aggrieved party, but as mentioned before, possibly not aggrieved enough to blow up the entire FTA over it.
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1380144222913826824
First 58,962
Second 372,241
Total 431,203
We tried to stay as cool, as possible, in response, but it is understandable that some people got a bit punchy
Anyway we are where we are, and it is not good
Here are some Spanish experts saying the restriction in AZ now makes it difficult for the country to jab 70% by the summer as planned. All this nonsense will have real effects
https://twitter.com/noticiasdesalud/status/1380142774276722690?s=20
47975 / 337739 for an average day
Then along came Boris, and that was that. Huge Con Maj instead of weak deal with the DUP, and Boris's Brexit instead of Theresa's compromise
I do think it would be a mandate, and at best it is carelessly worded, but I'm not sure Mr Meeks is right it is an admission of mandate, just admission of practical reality. He does tend to get overexcited.
She made it her #1 priority, fair enough if the EU reciprocated. They didn't.
That meant the UK was the one expected to make every compromise for peace.
It takes two to tango. Once one party abandoned peace as the priority, which the EU did, the other party is right to reciprocate.
You don't tackle an absence of peace from the opposite side with pacifism on your own side.
Entrance to ENA was reserved for those who scored highest on the banque tests which means everyone who went there was academically brilliant with a bottomless appetite fir hard work. Students spend TWO YEARS preparing for the test which takes place over two weeks. If you have an institution exclusively populated by workaholic geniuses it's not surprising that a certain unhealthy elitism will surface.
ENA had to go because it became an agoge for a disconnected managerial class that ran the French state.
- the possibility of meeting family and friends who haven't seen each other in the flesh for a year
Resulted in lots of people doing other things than a vaccination. Surprising. Or not.
Just educated in the wrong things.
Among other things, they aren't much use as technocrats when they don't understand technology....
If they had *tried* to get a second referendum, with those vote things in Parliament, now that would have been a different matter.
Another problem is that they are all educated in the same high pressure and technocratical way, meaning they all think the same way. So they will all approach the same problem with the same solution. it is better to have a variety of opinion
If one party insists peace must come first under all circumstances, while the other party does not, then the second party is simply holding a gun to the head of the first.
Either BOTH parties put peace first, or neither can.
But mandate doesnt really mean anything anyway. Governments claim it all the time and oppositions say the former dont have it, and everyone moves goalposts to justify that.
It's a near certainty that Sindy backers will have a majority at Holyrood again, possibly the SNP on their own would, which is a pretty clear mandate as these things go, but that won't matter to Boris. Likewise if by some miracle they didn't get a majority I'm sure the SNP could argue mandate based on being largest party and 50/50 polling.
https://twitter.com/akmaciver/status/1380146622856826880?s=20
I'm of the strand that I want peace, but if we're pushed we need to push back. Peace is only viable if both parties want it, the EU rejected it as top priority first so we're right to protect our own interests like they do - nobody else will do it for us will they?
This gives a good indication as to why case numbers are now in free fall. Combined with those who have already had Covid there are many people who have immunity. As soon as they get the doses to get through the 30 to 49s then the risk ought to be tiny and it will be very hard for the virus to spread.
Any pressure for a reunification vote, such as there is, will dramatically recede
No doubt this is in the minds of the smarter people provoking the riots
https://twitter.com/JamesWoodfield/status/1380106530876456978?s=20
"Brainfucked ball garglers" is a splendid piece of phrasing
If it was an "essential" work meeting, then it might be borderline arguable rather than downright flouting.
Perhaps everyone was tested first or brought a vaxport...
Coveney trashed the farm to get a big job and now the EU wont give it to him
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/simon-coveneys-burning-ambition-to-land-top-350000-eu-job-hits-speed-bump-over-mandatory-hotel-quarantine-extension-40286857.html
Still he can always claim credit for setting the North alight again.
Logically I think it makes sense now as those below 50 are statistically at lower risk than oldies with one jab. Even if as someone in their early 40s waiting for their jab it is very frustrating having to wait. I'm the only adult in my family who has not been jabbed now.
In this pretty grim debate what is being ignored about Boris's position with regard to the deal he struck is not: Is it perfect? But what, with relevant detail, could he have agreed which would be possible, better, gettable through parliament, respected the Referendum?
IMHO it is most likely that the deal done, with its essential re-doing which is now obvious, was about the best possible within the constraints. Personally i supported 'Norway for Now' but that would never get through the commons. Parliament had lots of chances to do better and rejected every option.
In the long run Boris may well have done the best possible.
He did the best possible for himself alone
Or are you speaking figuratively?
(btw Fuck Belstaff and all who sale in her)
https://twitter.com/NowIsTheTime21/status/1380104471779414018?s=20
The Remain Parliament fanned the flames by rejecting every option available.
Boris did the right thing in getting Britain away from the wreckage. Now we can salvage and sooth NI which what should have happened before Varadkar, Coventry, Barnier and May created the clusterfuck.
I accept that at some point a red line(s) will have to go. But which? My preference - a united Ireland - is one of the infinity of options (along with every other) to which the DUP says No.