Good to see a minor outbreak of sanity in France. There'll be an uncomfortable calculation to be done since the Health Authorities told them to do it from January. Could have had another 3m with one dose.
PARIS (Reuters) - France will lengthen the period between the first and second shots of mRNA anti-COVID vaccines to six weeks from four weeks as of April 14 to accelerate the inoculation campaign, Health Minister Olivier Veran told the JDD newspaper on Sunday.
Although France’s top health authority advised a six-week period between the two shots in January in order to stretch supplies, the government at the time said there was insufficient data on how well the vaccines performed with a longer interval.
Macron claimed the AZ vaccine was quasi-ineffective for people over 65. Very, very loudly. France’s top health authority was always going to get drowned out. And on delaying second doses, reluctant to get fired by pointing out that as with vaccines, on refusing to adopt "l'attitde rosbif" he was again being a twat.
I had dinner last night with some French contacts of mine
They thought that Xavier Bertrand was in with a good shot. Admittedly I was teasing them about the prospect of a Melenchon - Le Pen run off in round 2 (“Alien vs Predator”)
Interesting. "his best shot probably relies on the president stumbling badly" - how many extra deaths laid at Macron's door does it take to constitute a bad stumble?
Dunno, what's the current score on BJ's 'I think we got away with it'?
Or Nicola's
Still running at c.2/3 of England's per capita I believe. I know how you guys love a stat..
Scotland population density: 65 per sq. km
England population density: 275 per sq. km
Want to calculate deaths per sq km and compare? For those who love a stat....
But that doesn't work either does it? If you eliminate the vast areas where practically no one lives in Scotland the population density of Scotland changes significantly. To take it to its extreme it is like calculating the population density for a desert state and claiming that is meaningful density figure.
Only way you can make it meaningful is to compare large cities to large cities and towns to towns and areas containing villages to areas contain villages of comparable densities.
There's always some external excuse for the BJ fanbois.
We need a cull of BJ fanbois.
They dominate discussion (once again we have a “Keir is crap” thread) and it was appalling to see @kamski bullied off here the other day for dating to express a dissenting opinion.
Perhaps one or two could refrain from posting in aid of encouraging a diversity of the opinion.
And you wonder why the left keeps losing. Have you seen which party is on 45% in the polls? Because it's not yours.
Such traditional Tory hubris, in the run up to the coming financial crisis, and what could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile at least we can enjoy watching big spending, interventionist, investment-oriented government in action, whilst you take consolation from the fact that all the cheques are being written out in front of the flag.
Yes. From the domestic economic point of view the spending spree is quite left wing. Almost pre-Thatcherite in its redistributive, "pick winners" spending on white elephants, protected behind tarrif walls. Maybe it will work, but I do forsee disquiet from traditional fiscally conservative supporters of free markets. Sooner or later they will ask how it is all paid for.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the undeniable death of Thatcherism within what is now the mainstream Tory party is behind the revival of its fortunes. It’s always changed to remain relevant, and this is the latest transition. I don’t think you’ll see it led again by a Thatcherite (effectively a modern Gladstonian Liberal) for some years.
I think this quite perceptive. In many ways Brexitism is revenge on the Thatcherites, served cold. While the majority of Brexiteers were old school Shire Tories, the key constituency to get on board were working class on the old coalfields. The common factor was feeling left behind by a service economy based on London, and other metropolises. F**k business! We have no need of experts!
I doubt whether that can be a longlasting alliance, but difficult for Labour to become that party of Gladstonian Liberalism.
Yes. I think the Tories odds on for the next election because any Brexit disruption they might have been held to account for will be concealed by Covid, and I do think the recovery likely to surprise on the upside (e.g. election giveaways).
At some point though, political gravity will reassert itself and as you say, their current coalition is fragile. The next time the Tories are in opposition they will be, once again, lost and confused.
Oppositions are generally lost and confused, allowing commentators and PB'ers to pontificate muchly about how they're never going to win again, and then along comes something unexpected, and they do.
And, yep, that car - like a Ferrari - had to be in deepest richest RED.
90% of Ferraris sold were Rosso Corsa at one point. Now it's closer to 50%. The F1 cars have switched to a different colour called Rosso Scuderia because Rosso Corsa looks like shit on TV.
If I had the money and inclination I'd get an 812GTS in Tour de France Blu and bang it off the limiter in every gear on the reg.
Wouldn't trust myself with one in practice but, yes, I'd flirt with blue too as an alternative to classic red. Not keen on the other options, the greens, blacks, yellows etc. I lived in the SoF for a short while and used to pop to MC quite often, just to mooch around. The peacock parade of Ferraris (and similar such as Lambos etc) in the square near the casino was quite something to see. All cars in MC were either lavish "look what I've got" affairs or diddy little smart cars. What a carry on.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planed bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
A French politician who spent most of his career under criminal investigation and works for Ursula von der Leyen has not been entirely straight?
And in next week’s news, a bear shits in the woods.
What makes me smile about France is that so many politicans receive criminal convictions, yet are handed ludicrously light sentences. It's almost as if a conviction is a qualification for office.
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planed bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
Interesting piece in the Observer on manufacturing constraints on vaccine production. It seems pretty globalised as an industry, so very few can be self-sufficient.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planed bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
Interesting piece in the Observer on manufacturing constraints on vaccine production. It seems pretty globalised as an industry, so very few can be self-sufficient.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planed bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
A French politician who spent most of his career under criminal investigation and works for Ursula von der Leyen has not been entirely straight?
And in next week’s news, a bear shits in the woods.
What makes me smile about France is that so many politicans receive criminal convictions, yet are handed ludicrously light sentences. It's almost as if a conviction is a qualification for office.
In 1954 a spy thriller set in France contained this line:
‘There is a politician who while capable, has always had around his actions a suspicion of dishonesty.’
‘In the present state of politics, that remark will not serve to identify any one man.’
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
who has been weaponising the border?
The leave campaign decided to ignore the border, and concentrate on winning the vote. They didn't take care. Where are the leave campaigners now? in the Tory government. They are now trying to blame the EU for something they should have taken a lot more care about.
I think the big problem for Labour is the general public see Johnson and Sunak as a genuine change from the austerity focussed Tory governments of 2010 onwards. It feels like a change of the guard in the way Blair into Brown never did.
That means the public will need to tire of the new Tories all over again before they want to switch to Labour. That won't happen during a vaccination programme going so well or the immediate aftermath of the return to normality.
Labour needs to be patient and see how the government decides how the bills will be paid, assuming the Bank of England won't foot them for too much longer. It is at that point they will have opportunities and need someone credible as leader. I still think Starmer fits the bill for that scenario, however uninspiring he has been so far, but he will need to take more risks on policy than he has during the pandemic.
The Bank of England will pay them as long as it’s told to.
Printing money is less of an issue when all your major competitors are doing the same
The suggestion that reconnecting with the working class narrative to rebuild Labours support seems to ignore the fact that things have changed and the Tories current playbook of more right wing nationalism culturally and socially allied with less austerity driven policies is going to be quite popular with communities in the more “ working class “ seats .
Labour need either the Tories to go back to austerity or some major economic meltdown to feel they have a decent chance in 2024.
The one benefit re Starmer is he’s not going to terrify voters or be loathed as Corbyn was . Indifference is easier to overcome.
I've got a feeling in my bones that we are, at least for a couple of years going to see some pretty stonking levels of economic growth.
Agreed. At least 5% this year, probably 3-4% next year. Trickier after that.
For what it's worth, the IMF is now saying 5.3% this year, and 5.1% in 2022.
I think that's a tad optimistic, especially for 2022. There is clearly suppressed demand, there will be a lot of bounce back and the fiscal policy really could not be much more stimulative but by 2022 the pressure to reduce deficit spending will be sucking demand out of the economy (relatively, we will still have a very large deficit) and I think things will slow down quite a lot in the second half of the year. We shall see.
In economic cycle terms 2024 is not looking particularly optimal for the Tories, they may be better advised to go earlier.
But is the deficit 'structural'? Post 2007 we were left with unwinding a structural deficit of recurring expenditure. Much of this has been business grants, lost economic growth, capital spends etc. Theyll fall off the balance sheet quickly enough.
I agree the spending side can fall a lot more easily than poor George had to contend with in the Coalition and after but the revenue side of the balance sheet looks a tad grim. A lot of businesses have racked up a lot of losses and won't be paying much tax for a while. It is the fall on the expenditure side that I expect to take the steam out of the economy in the second half of next year.
The suggestion that reconnecting with the working class narrative to rebuild Labours support seems to ignore the fact that things have changed and the Tories current playbook of more right wing nationalism culturally and socially allied with less austerity driven policies is going to be quite popular with communities in the more “ working class “ seats .
Labour need either the Tories to go back to austerity or some major economic meltdown to feel they have a decent chance in 2024.
The one benefit re Starmer is he’s not going to terrify voters or be loathed as Corbyn was . Indifference is easier to overcome.
I've got a feeling in my bones that we are, at least for a couple of years going to see some pretty stonking levels of economic growth.
Agreed. At least 5% this year, probably 3-4% next year. Trickier after that.
For what it's worth, the IMF is now saying 5.3% this year, and 5.1% in 2022.
I think that's a tad optimistic, especially for 2022. There is clearly suppressed demand, there will be a lot of bounce back and the fiscal policy really could not be much more stimulative but by 2022 the pressure to reduce deficit spending will be sucking demand out of the economy (relatively, we will still have a very large deficit) and I think things will slow down quite a lot in the second half of the year. We shall see.
In economic cycle terms 2024 is not looking particularly optimal for the Tories, they may be better advised to go earlier.
But is the deficit 'structural'? Post 2007 we were left with unwinding a structural deficit of recurring expenditure. Much of this has been business grants, lost economic growth, capital spends etc. Theyll fall off the balance sheet quickly enough.
I cannot see tax receipts in the next year being very good, particularly in the business sector. The companies making money are mostly the Internet giants that pay no tax.
The income side of the deficit is as significant as the expenditure. Both will be a problem for Sunak.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planed bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
A French politician who spent most of his career under criminal investigation and works for Ursula von der Leyen has not been entirely straight?
And in next week’s news, a bear shits in the woods.
What makes me smile about France is that so many politicans receive criminal convictions, yet are handed ludicrously light sentences. It's almost as if a conviction is a qualification for office.
Well, they're obviously not going to have many moral or ideological convictions, so criminal ones will have to do...
Good to see a minor outbreak of sanity in France. There'll be an uncomfortable calculation to be done since the Health Authorities told them to do it from January. Could have had another 3m with one dose.
PARIS (Reuters) - France will lengthen the period between the first and second shots of mRNA anti-COVID vaccines to six weeks from four weeks as of April 14 to accelerate the inoculation campaign, Health Minister Olivier Veran told the JDD newspaper on Sunday.
Although France’s top health authority advised a six-week period between the two shots in January in order to stretch supplies, the government at the time said there was insufficient data on how well the vaccines performed with a longer interval.
Macron claimed the AZ vaccine was quasi-ineffective for people over 65. Very, very loudly. France’s top health authority was always going to get drowned out. And on delaying second doses, reluctant to get fired by pointing out that as with vaccines, on refusing to adopt "l'attitde rosbif" he was again being a twat.
I had dinner last night with some French contacts of mine
They thought that Xavier Bertrand was in with a good shot. Admittedly I was teasing them about the prospect of a Melenchon - Le Pen run off in round 2 (“Alien vs Predator”)
Interesting. "his best shot probably relies on the president stumbling badly" - how many extra deaths laid at Macron's door does it take to constitute a bad stumble?
Dunno, what's the current score on BJ's 'I think we got away with it'?
Or Nicola's
Still running at c.2/3 of England's per capita I believe. I know how you guys love a stat..
Scotland population density: 65 per sq. km
England population density: 275 per sq. km
Want to calculate deaths per sq km and compare? For those who love a stat....
But that doesn't work either does it? If you eliminate the vast areas where practically no one lives in Scotland the population density of Scotland changes significantly. To take it to its extreme it is like calculating the population density for a desert state and claiming that is meaningful density figure.
Only way you can make it meaningful is to compare large cities to large cities and towns to towns and areas containing villages to areas contain villages of comparable densities.
There's always some external excuse for the BJ fanbois.
We need a cull of BJ fanbois.
They dominate discussion (once again we have a “Keir is crap” thread) and it was appalling to see @kamski bullied off here the other day for dating to express a dissenting opinion.
Perhaps one or two could refrain from posting in aid of encouraging a diversity of the opinion.
And you wonder why the left keeps losing. Have you seen which party is on 45% in the polls? Because it's not yours.
Such traditional Tory hubris, in the run up to the coming financial crisis, and what could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile at least we can enjoy watching big spending, interventionist, investment-oriented government in action, whilst you take consolation from the fact that all the cheques are being written out in front of the flag.
Yes. From the domestic economic point of view the spending spree is quite left wing. Almost pre-Thatcherite in its redistributive, "pick winners" spending on white elephants, protected behind tarrif walls. Maybe it will work, but I do forsee disquiet from traditional fiscally conservative supporters of free markets. Sooner or later they will ask how it is all paid for.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the undeniable death of Thatcherism within what is now the mainstream Tory party is behind the revival of its fortunes. It’s always changed to remain relevant, and this is the latest transition. I don’t think you’ll see it led again by a Thatcherite (effectively a modern Gladstonian Liberal) for some years.
I think this quite perceptive. In many ways Brexitism is revenge on the Thatcherites, served cold. While the majority of Brexiteers were old school Shire Tories, the key constituency to get on board were working class on the old coalfields. The common factor was feeling left behind by a service economy based on London, and other metropolises. F**k business! We have no need of experts!
I doubt whether that can be a longlasting alliance, but difficult for Labour to become that party of Gladstonian Liberalism.
Though there is the difference between Thatcherism the myth and Thatcherism the reality.
Thatcherism the reality included taxpayer subsidy for coalmining and 60% income tax.
Latest EMA shows Tories with a 7.2% lead and an overall majority of 42.
Just a current snap shot. Long way to go yet.
You wonder how many candidates Refuk will actually stand? I doubt it will be a tiny proportion of the 276 seats where Brexit Party stood in 2019. If it is even a thing by the net election.
LibDems threatening single taxi levels again.
I suspect those figures are based on Electoral Calculus rather than UNS. The latter implies 23 Labour gains and a Tory majority of 30.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
Leo the Blueshirt Prick is back at the end of next year. That'll smooth things over.
That Enda Kenny working furiously in JSON on facial recognition for pigs thing was just one of David "Dave" Davieses's many lies.
The 45% vote share the Conservatives have now is the same they had in 1979, but it is, in many ways, a very different share of the electorate.
The Conservatives have retreated a long way in London, core cities, university constituencies, Merseyside, and much (but by no means all) of Scotland. They've advanced across the North, Wales, and the Midlands in smaller urban areas. They're retained their English and Welsh rural and semi-rural dominance.
A similar pattern to the USA.
But has similar happened in Europe, Australia, Canada etc ?
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
He was asked about AZN but gave a reply about vaccines in general (the 37 million jabs figure is the total sum, not just AZN).
Surely the first woman ever to hold either of those roles? Or is there some Tory that I’ve missed?
No, but I was looking at it through the lens of Labour's inability to have a female leader - 46 years and counting behind the supposed misogynistic Tories. Dodd will give Labour's knuckle-draggers extra ammunition, when it comes to replacing Starmer.
It’s not about ammunition, because nobody overtly campaigns against a woman being leader of the Labour Party. It’s just that they always find an excuse, however flimsy, as to why that particular woman isn’t the right person at that moment.
In 2010 and 2020 it was easy because the lone/leading female candidate clearly was not up to being leader. But in 2016 they decided Cooper was ‘uninspiring’ and elected Corbyn instead. Now, if you want a clearer and more absurd example of sexism I’m struggling to find it, but nobody stood up and actually said ‘we don’t want her as leader because she has a vagina.’
In a way, such covert sexism is more insidious than that would have been. But it does mean there’s no reason to think Dodds’ performance will make a difference to it.
Cooper's problem was not her gender, but her politics, as was Kendall's. Much as I liked them personally and their politics, that was not what their party wanted. The party wanted a clear break from New Labour, of which Ed Miliband was the repeat as farce.
Corbyn was a relic of the old left, of a mythical time of purity before Blair contaminated everything. This is why he motivated the young, and swept up older activists who finally felt free of the taint of Blairism.
Corbyn owed his election as Labour leader in 2015 to the stupidity of Harriet Harman as Acting leader. Her decision to whip Labour MPs to abstain on Osborne's Welfare reforms generated fury in the wider membership. Of the four contenders Corbyn as a non-Shadow Cabinet was able to vote against the proposals whilst the others were hamstrung . Much of Corbyn's momentum came from that act. Had Harman not done that, Cooper or Burnham would have won the Leadership. Both should have stepped down from the Shadow Cabinet to act independently.
I've read the (pretty good) Owen Jones book* on the rise and fall of Corbyn and he puts this event front and centre too.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
Good to see a minor outbreak of sanity in France. There'll be an uncomfortable calculation to be done since the Health Authorities told them to do it from January. Could have had another 3m with one dose.
PARIS (Reuters) - France will lengthen the period between the first and second shots of mRNA anti-COVID vaccines to six weeks from four weeks as of April 14 to accelerate the inoculation campaign, Health Minister Olivier Veran told the JDD newspaper on Sunday.
Although France’s top health authority advised a six-week period between the two shots in January in order to stretch supplies, the government at the time said there was insufficient data on how well the vaccines performed with a longer interval.
Macron claimed the AZ vaccine was quasi-ineffective for people over 65. Very, very loudly. France’s top health authority was always going to get drowned out. And on delaying second doses, reluctant to get fired by pointing out that as with vaccines, on refusing to adopt "l'attitde rosbif" he was again being a twat.
I had dinner last night with some French contacts of mine
They thought that Xavier Bertrand was in with a good shot. Admittedly I was teasing them about the prospect of a Melenchon - Le Pen run off in round 2 (“Alien vs Predator”)
Interesting. "his best shot probably relies on the president stumbling badly" - how many extra deaths laid at Macron's door does it take to constitute a bad stumble?
Dunno, what's the current score on BJ's 'I think we got away with it'?
Or Nicola's
Still running at c.2/3 of England's per capita I believe. I know how you guys love a stat..
Scotland population density: 65 per sq. km
England population density: 275 per sq. km
Want to calculate deaths per sq km and compare? For those who love a stat....
But that doesn't work either does it? If you eliminate the vast areas where practically no one lives in Scotland the population density of Scotland changes significantly. To take it to its extreme it is like calculating the population density for a desert state and claiming that is meaningful density figure.
Only way you can make it meaningful is to compare large cities to large cities and towns to towns and areas containing villages to areas contain villages of comparable densities.
There's always some external excuse for the BJ fanbois.
We need a cull of BJ fanbois.
They dominate discussion (once again we have a “Keir is crap” thread) and it was appalling to see @kamski bullied off here the other day for dating to express a dissenting opinion.
Perhaps one or two could refrain from posting in aid of encouraging a diversity of the opinion.
And you wonder why the left keeps losing. Have you seen which party is on 45% in the polls? Because it's not yours.
Such traditional Tory hubris, in the run up to the coming financial crisis, and what could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile at least we can enjoy watching big spending, interventionist, investment-oriented government in action, whilst you take consolation from the fact that all the cheques are being written out in front of the flag.
Yes. From the domestic economic point of view the spending spree is quite left wing. Almost pre-Thatcherite in its redistributive, "pick winners" spending on white elephants, protected behind tarrif walls. Maybe it will work, but I do forsee disquiet from traditional fiscally conservative supporters of free markets. Sooner or later they will ask how it is all paid for.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the undeniable death of Thatcherism within what is now the mainstream Tory party is behind the revival of its fortunes. It’s always changed to remain relevant, and this is the latest transition. I don’t think you’ll see it led again by a Thatcherite (effectively a modern Gladstonian Liberal) for some years.
I think this quite perceptive. In many ways Brexitism is revenge on the Thatcherites, served cold. While the majority of Brexiteers were old school Shire Tories, the key constituency to get on board were working class on the old coalfields. The common factor was feeling left behind by a service economy based on London, and other metropolises. F**k business! We have no need of experts!
I doubt whether that can be a longlasting alliance, but difficult for Labour to become that party of Gladstonian Liberalism.
Though there is the difference between Thatcherism the myth and Thatcherism the reality.
Thatcherism the reality included taxpayer subsidy for coalmining and 60% income tax.
Well, that was how Thatcherism started, not how it finished.
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
Promising there'd be no effective border down the Irish Sea, then putting one there, and telling unionists and NI businesses that they'll face no new barriers to trade whatsoever, then dropping a load of such impediments right on top of them, was never going to end well, whatever the EU did or didn't do.
Being part of the EU was hugely helpful in sustaining our own country; not only the unusual status of Northern Ireland with republicans able to feel closer to Ireland within the EU, but also helping to keep a lid on separatism within Scotland, which could pull its weight as part of 'Europe of the Regions'. Similarly it helps make workable the semi-autonomous position of regions like Alto Adige in Italy, where most people don't even speak Italian: if Italy ever left the EU, any consequential barriers to trade or movement between SudTirolers and their Austrian cousins to the North would instantly become a huge political issue.
Our PM thought he could just ignore such considerations and press ahead regardless, making whatever promises he need to make to keep everyone happy meanwhile. As with his similar handling of women, such an approach to life comes back to bite, sooner or later.
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
who has been weaponising the border?
The leave campaign decided to ignore the border, and concentrate on winning the vote. They didn't take care. Where are the leave campaigners now? in the Tory government. They are now trying to blame the EU for something they should have taken a lot more care about.
It's something that was barely mentioned at all, by either side, during the campaign.
After the referendum, The UK and Irish governments worked together on resolving the customs issue in the traditional NI way, with a lot of fudge, in order not to inflame the situation.
Varakdar and Barnier then decided to tear up those discussions, and use the NI border as the centre of their plan to 'punish' to UK for voting to leave the EU.
The solution, as ever, is going to be another load of fudge agreed between the UK and Ireland.
Given the advanced stage of Megan Markles pregnancy and the current covid situation traveling to the funeral wouldn’t be a wise thing to do but clearly the hate mob have decided to criticize her . And then if she did come they would say her presence would upstage the funeral . So she can’t win either way.
I’m curious as to what the reaction will be to Prince Andrew attending. On the one hand he is definitely persona non grata now, but on the other it is his father’s funeral, the sort of thing that convicted prisoners are let out on license to attend.
I'm no fan of Prince Andrew but that's an unfair comparison. He has not been formally accused of anything let alone charged or convicted. He's retired from public life. He is a son grieving for his father. Of course he should attend what is a family funeral.
As for Meghan if I were nearly 40, in the advanced stages of pregnancy and had had a miscarriage I wouldn't travel either. But in any case, she barely knew Prince Philip and there are others like his nephew and niece who would have a greater claim to be present than her, given the restrictions on numbers.
Latest EMA shows Tories with a 7.2% lead and an overall majority of 42.
Just a current snap shot. Long way to go yet.
You wonder how many candidates Refuk will actually stand? I doubt it will be a tiny proportion of the 276 seats where Brexit Party stood in 2019. If it is even a thing by the net election.
LibDems threatening single taxi levels again.
I suspect those figures are based on Electoral Calculus rather than UNS. The latter implies 23 Labour gains and a Tory majority of 30.
Old boundaries?
Surely the Tories have a big enough majority to push though new boundaries in time for a 2023 election? Instruct the EC, pull your finger out.... Yet another election on boundaries that are mahoosively out of date would be the bigger crime against democracy.
The suggestion that reconnecting with the working class narrative to rebuild Labours support seems to ignore the fact that things have changed and the Tories current playbook of more right wing nationalism culturally and socially allied with less austerity driven policies is going to be quite popular with communities in the more “ working class “ seats .
Labour need either the Tories to go back to austerity or some major economic meltdown to feel they have a decent chance in 2024.
The one benefit re Starmer is he’s not going to terrify voters or be loathed as Corbyn was . Indifference is easier to overcome.
I've got a feeling in my bones that we are, at least for a couple of years going to see some pretty stonking levels of economic growth.
Agreed. At least 5% this year, probably 3-4% next year. Trickier after that.
I think it will expose the superficiality of some of the obsession around growth. Talking about stonking levels of growth - which may amount to nothing more than getting back to output levels pre-covid is the mindset of people looking to invest in the stock market. Not the experience of the average punter.
The suggestion that reconnecting with the working class narrative to rebuild Labours support seems to ignore the fact that things have changed and the Tories current playbook of more right wing nationalism culturally and socially allied with less austerity driven policies is going to be quite popular with communities in the more “ working class “ seats .
Labour need either the Tories to go back to austerity or some major economic meltdown to feel they have a decent chance in 2024.
The one benefit re Starmer is he’s not going to terrify voters or be loathed as Corbyn was . Indifference is easier to overcome.
I've got a feeling in my bones that we are, at least for a couple of years going to see some pretty stonking levels of economic growth.
Agreed. At least 5% this year, probably 3-4% next year. Trickier after that.
I think it will expose the superficiality of some of the obsession around growth. Talking about stonking levels of growth - which may amount to nothing more than getting back to output levels pre-covid is the mindset of people looking to invest in the stock market. Not the experience of the average punter.
Yes, a bit like Trump’s constant touting of the Dow Jones level as evidence of economic success
Cut 30 from the following - broad order of likelihood of attendance (Lowest at bottom)
Wife QEII (1)
Children (4) Charles Anne Andrew Edward
Partners of children (3) Camilla Timothy Lawrence Sophie
Grandchildren (8) William Harry Eugenie Beatrice Lady Louise Windsor James, viscount Severn Zara Tindall Peter Phillips
Partners of grandchildren (5) Mike Tindall Kate Jack Brooksbank Autumn Kelly Edoardo Mozzi Definitely not present Meghan Markle
Other relatives close to the Queen (9)
Princess Alexandra Duke of Gloucester Duchess of Gloucester Duke of Kent Duchess of Kent Prince Michael of Kent Princess Michael of Kent Earl of Snowdon Lady Sarah Chatto
Parents of grandchildren, divorced (2) Sarah Ferguson Mark Phillips
Other worthies (1) Tony Radakin (First sea Lord) Definitely not present Boris Johnson
School age Greatgrandchildren (5) Savannah Isla George Mia Charlotte
Greatgrandchildren Toddlers (2) Louis Lena
Greatgrandchildren Babies (2) August Lucas Definitely not present Archie
I think his nephew and niece have a greater claim to be present than the very young great-grand-children.
He is pretty certain to make the second round, in what I understand is a French type system.
Yes - he will make the second round.
The main question is which of the carnival of freaks will be there with him.
Peruvian history suggests that we start placing bets on the length of his first prison sentence for corruption, now.
EDIT - double checked the polling. Looks like he has dropped back quite a bit. The Shining Path stuff is still pretty toxic in Peru... Yonhy *seems* at the front now...
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
who has been weaponising the border?
The leave campaign decided to ignore the border, and concentrate on winning the vote. They didn't take care. Where are the leave campaigners now? in the Tory government. They are now trying to blame the EU for something they should have taken a lot more care about.
It's something that was barely mentioned at all, by either side, during the campaign.
After the referendum, The UK and Irish governments worked together on resolving the customs issue in the traditional NI way, with a lot of fudge, in order not to inflame the situation.
Varakdar and Barnier then decided to tear up those discussions, and use the NI border as the centre of their plan to 'punish' to UK for voting to leave the EU.
The solution, as ever, is going to be another load of fudge agreed between the UK and Ireland.
Not entirely fair. Both Tony Blair and John Major made speeches warning about the implications for Northern Ireland, and within NI the Alliance Party as well as nationalists made this central to their messaging. As did many politicians in the Republic. The DUP, of course, were at that stage passionately pro-Brexit, and the Leave campaign didn't want to know.
As Deutsche Welle said recently, "Brexit's the problem: Brexit alone can hardly be blamed for the latest flare-up of the deep sectarian conflict that has endured for more than 400 years. But, from the moment that seismic referendum result was confirmed nearly five years ago, it was clear that at least one community in Northern Ireland's fragile, complex divide was going to lose out. Though the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland — whether they be nationalist, unionist or neither — are appalled by the violence, hardly anyone is surprised by it."
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
Oh, and by the way, I would be careful who you label a deluded idiot, as I suspect as they years go by 17.8 million people will start to get annoyed with you.
I see the usual suspects are out blaming the EU for 'politicising' the Irish border. Jonathan Powell, whatever you think of him, has written a good piece in the Observer.
The first couple of paragraphs are pretty succinct:
'The Northern Ireland conundrum over Brexit was always insoluble. As John Major and Tony Blair pointed out in the referendum campaign, if the UK left the single market and customs union there had to be a border somewhere, either on the island of Ireland or in the Irish Sea. In either case, someone’s rights were going to be hurt: nationalists or unionists.
In December 2019, Boris Johnson opted to put the border in the Irish Sea to get his Brexit deal over the line. He then chose to lie about it, live on TV, saying there would be no border and that no one would have to fill in any forms. At first, the unionist response was muted. Arlene Foster even said NI had the best of both worlds.'
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
As I mentioned in another reply, while the article mentions AZN, the reply was referring to all vaccines. You can see that in the use of the 37 million dose statistic that he used.
And the EU were/are chucking contract law in the bin to solve their problems. Not that we haven't see this behaviour before. Just look at what happened to the PPE from France.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
No it isn’t, it’s an Anglo-Swedish company. But even that doesn’t help, because actually the holding company is Anglo-Swedish but the individual components retain their national identities. To confuse matters, the contract with the EU was signed with the Swedish branch under Belgian law.
The further point being, the EU failed to buy the vaccines in time because they wanted to bargain on price. We bought early and paid extra. We own the doses, not the EU. They got what they paid for. The fact they don’t now like what they paid for is their problem.
Surely the first woman ever to hold either of those roles? Or is there some Tory that I’ve missed?
No, but I was looking at it through the lens of Labour's inability to have a female leader - 46 years and counting behind the supposed misogynistic Tories. Dodd will give Labour's knuckle-draggers extra ammunition, when it comes to replacing Starmer.
It’s not about ammunition, because nobody overtly campaigns against a woman being leader of the Labour Party. It’s just that they always find an excuse, however flimsy, as to why that particular woman isn’t the right person at that moment.
In 2010 and 2020 it was easy because the lone/leading female candidate clearly was not up to being leader. But in 2016 they decided Cooper was ‘uninspiring’ and elected Corbyn instead. Now, if you want a clearer and more absurd example of sexism I’m struggling to find it, but nobody stood up and actually said ‘we don’t want her as leader because she has a vagina.’
In a way, such covert sexism is more insidious than that would have been. But it does mean there’s no reason to think Dodds’ performance will make a difference to it.
Cooper's problem was not her gender, but her politics, as was Kendall's. Much as I liked them personally and their politics, that was not what their party wanted. The party wanted a clear break from New Labour, of which Ed Miliband was the repeat as farce.
Corbyn was a relic of the old left, of a mythical time of purity before Blair contaminated everything. This is why he motivated the young, and swept up older activists who finally felt free of the taint of Blairism.
Corbyn owed his election as Labour leader in 2015 to the stupidity of Harriet Harman as Acting leader. Her decision to whip Labour MPs to abstain on Osborne's Welfare reforms generated fury in the wider membership. Of the four contenders Corbyn as a non-Shadow Cabinet was able to vote against the proposals whilst the others were hamstrung . Much of Corbyn's momentum came from that act. Had Harman not done that, Cooper or Burnham would have won the Leadership. Both should have stepped down from the Shadow Cabinet to act independently.
Wasn't it something to do with Labour MPs nominating Corbyn to engender a 'wider debate' so the far left could be definitively thrashed and forgotten?
Putting him on the ballot paper was not the key to his victory. Had it not been for Harman, he would have managed a respectable third place but no more than that.
The suggestion that reconnecting with the working class narrative to rebuild Labours support seems to ignore the fact that things have changed and the Tories current playbook of more right wing nationalism culturally and socially allied with less austerity driven policies is going to be quite popular with communities in the more “ working class “ seats .
Labour need either the Tories to go back to austerity or some major economic meltdown to feel they have a decent chance in 2024.
The one benefit re Starmer is he’s not going to terrify voters or be loathed as Corbyn was . Indifference is easier to overcome.
I've got a feeling in my bones that we are, at least for a couple of years going to see some pretty stonking levels of economic growth.
Agreed. At least 5% this year, probably 3-4% next year. Trickier after that.
I think it will expose the superficiality of some of the obsession around growth. Talking about stonking levels of growth - which may amount to nothing more than getting back to output levels pre-covid is the mindset of people looking to invest in the stock market. Not the experience of the average punter.
It should but whether it will or not remains to be seen. Of course if the IMF is right we are going to bounce back from this economic disaster way faster than we did after the GFC.
A lot will depend on employment. The statistics on here a few weeks ago now showed that the total in employment was down but the number of indigenous Brits was significantly up with a reduction in EU and other country employees being more than the fall. If that trend continues Boris will be doing very well but it seems almost too good to be true.
OT comment and question about trade. Now weve left the single market, ive found buying things from china to be much more expensive, but it seems like some fishy was going on. Aliexpress is an example. Postage costs are often phenominal to ship to uk but free for delivery to countries within the EU. The costs are so great there are closer to that of what might be VAT.
The UK I understand now requires countries selling goods to the UK over a certain amount to collect VAT on their behalf.
My suspicion is that huge volumes of goods get drop shipped into the EU, dont get customs checked and VAT is not actually levied within the EU from the Chinese website, and that control of our borders means that enforcement is now actually happening... Unfortunately to uk consumers this means we end up actually paying more.
Any thoughts or insight into this?
The buyer-pays-VAT reforms that came in here at the start of the year to deal with eg VAT-avoidance on Ebay/Amazon Marketplace are I think due to come in in the EU sometime this year.
That will make a difference, but not to transport costs.
I think the 'transport costs' are a cover to hide the differential pricing. From what you say about the avoidance, it looks like buyers within the EU are been sold goods without VAT been charged, but vat is getting levied for purchases to the UK, and the difference is getting pushed as delivery/transport costs.
So low cost producers are competing on a level playing field at last. That’s a good thing.
The suggestion that reconnecting with the working class narrative to rebuild Labours support seems to ignore the fact that things have changed and the Tories current playbook of more right wing nationalism culturally and socially allied with less austerity driven policies is going to be quite popular with communities in the more “ working class “ seats .
Labour need either the Tories to go back to austerity or some major economic meltdown to feel they have a decent chance in 2024.
The one benefit re Starmer is he’s not going to terrify voters or be loathed as Corbyn was . Indifference is easier to overcome.
I've got a feeling in my bones that we are, at least for a couple of years going to see some pretty stonking levels of economic growth.
Agreed. At least 5% this year, probably 3-4% next year. Trickier after that.
I think it will expose the superficiality of some of the obsession around growth. Talking about stonking levels of growth - which may amount to nothing more than getting back to output levels pre-covid is the mindset of people looking to invest in the stock market. Not the experience of the average punter.
IMHO markets are already looking ahead toward the post-covid spending spree, and much of the upside is already priced in. I don't think it would take much to trigger a correction, and there are various potential triggers on the horizon such as US inflation as they all rush out to spend their $1400, or conflict in Ukraine or with Taiwan. A cautious investor should already be looking to reduce exposure to the potentially more volatile of their investments - which was always traditional advice for April and May in London stockmarket lore in any case (as in "sell in May and go away....")
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
who has been weaponising the border?
The leave campaign decided to ignore the border, and concentrate on winning the vote. They didn't take care. Where are the leave campaigners now? in the Tory government. They are now trying to blame the EU for something they should have taken a lot more care about.
It's something that was barely mentioned at all, by either side, during the campaign.
After the referendum, The UK and Irish governments worked together on resolving the customs issue in the traditional NI way, with a lot of fudge, in order not to inflame the situation.
Varakdar and Barnier then decided to tear up those discussions, and use the NI border as the centre of their plan to 'punish' to UK for voting to leave the EU.
The solution, as ever, is going to be another load of fudge agreed between the UK and Ireland.
Not entirely fair. Both Tony Blair and John Major made speeches warning about the implications for Northern Ireland, and within NI the Alliance Party as well as nationalists made this central to their messaging. As did many politicians in the Republic. The DUP, of course, were at that stage passionately pro-Brexit, and the Leave campaign didn't want to know.
As Deutsche Welle said recently, "Brexit's the problem: Brexit alone can hardly be blamed for the latest flare-up of the deep sectarian conflict that has endured for more than 400 years. But, from the moment that seismic referendum result was confirmed nearly five years ago, it was clear that at least one community in Northern Ireland's fragile, complex divide was going to lose out. Though the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland — whether they be nationalist, unionist or neither — are appalled by the violence, hardly anyone is surprised by it."
I agree that the Irish Question was well flagged up even before the referendum. It may well have been more salient ijn Scotland which is a lot nearer NI than London, but I seem to recall the reaction from the Brexiter Tories around November 2016 whjen it became clear just how insoluble the GFA Agreement was when it came to Brexit.
Surely the first woman ever to hold either of those roles? Or is there some Tory that I’ve missed?
No, but I was looking at it through the lens of Labour's inability to have a female leader - 46 years and counting behind the supposed misogynistic Tories. Dodd will give Labour's knuckle-draggers extra ammunition, when it comes to replacing Starmer.
It’s not about ammunition, because nobody overtly campaigns against a woman being leader of the Labour Party. It’s just that they always find an excuse, however flimsy, as to why that particular woman isn’t the right person at that moment.
In 2010 and 2020 it was easy because the lone/leading female candidate clearly was not up to being leader. But in 2016 they decided Cooper was ‘uninspiring’ and elected Corbyn instead. Now, if you want a clearer and more absurd example of sexism I’m struggling to find it, but nobody stood up and actually said ‘we don’t want her as leader because she has a vagina.’
In a way, such covert sexism is more insidious than that would have been. But it does mean there’s no reason to think Dodds’ performance will make a difference to it.
Cooper's problem was not her gender, but her politics, as was Kendall's. Much as I liked them personally and their politics, that was not what their party wanted. The party wanted a clear break from New Labour, of which Ed Miliband was the repeat as farce.
Corbyn was a relic of the old left, of a mythical time of purity before Blair contaminated everything. This is why he motivated the young, and swept up older activists who finally felt free of the taint of Blairism.
Corbyn owed his election as Labour leader in 2015 to the stupidity of Harriet Harman as Acting leader. Her decision to whip Labour MPs to abstain on Osborne's Welfare reforms generated fury in the wider membership. Of the four contenders Corbyn as a non-Shadow Cabinet was able to vote against the proposals whilst the others were hamstrung . Much of Corbyn's momentum came from that act. Had Harman not done that, Cooper or Burnham would have won the Leadership. Both should have stepped down from the Shadow Cabinet to act independently.
Wasn't it something to do with Labour MPs nominating Corbyn to engender a 'wider debate' so the far left could be definitively thrashed and forgotten?
Putting him on the ballot paper was not the key to his victory. Had it not been for Harman, he would have managed a respectable third place but no more than that.
I think you’ll find that if he hadn’t been on the ballot paper not all the cockups in the world by Harman would have delivered him victory. Or anything else, for that matter.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
As I mentioned in another reply, while the article mentions AZN, the reply was referring to all vaccines. You can see that in the use of the 37 million dose statistic that he used.
And the EU were/are chucking contract law in the bin to solve their problems. Not that we haven't see this behaviour before. Just look at what happened to the PPE from France.
Which PPE, the useless stuff which Boris/Matt decided to spend money on (really giving the money to their mates?).
I dont agree that the article refers to all vaccines either.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
Oh, and by the way, I would be careful who you label a deluded idiot, as I suspect as they years go by 17.8 million people will start to get annoyed with you.
You're a completely deluded idiot, I just wish you were in France waiting endlessly for a vaccine, given that you clearly hate this country and love the EU.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
As I mentioned in another reply, while the article mentions AZN, the reply was referring to all vaccines. You can see that in the use of the 37 million dose statistic that he used.
And the EU were/are chucking contract law in the bin to solve their problems. Not that we haven't see this behaviour before. Just look at what happened to the PPE from France.
Which PPE, the useless stuff which Boris/Matt decided to spend money on (really giving the money to their mates?).
I dont agree that the article refers to all vaccines either.
Latest EMA shows Tories with a 7.2% lead and an overall majority of 42.
Just a current snap shot. Long way to go yet.
You wonder how many candidates Refuk will actually stand? I doubt it will be a tiny proportion of the 276 seats where Brexit Party stood in 2019. If it is even a thing by the net election.
LibDems threatening single taxi levels again.
I suspect those figures are based on Electoral Calculus rather than UNS. The latter implies 23 Labour gains and a Tory majority of 30.
Old boundaries?
Surely the Tories have a big enough majority to push though new boundaries in time for a 2023 election? Instruct the EC, pull your finger out.... Yet another election on boundaries that are mahoosively out of date would be the bigger crime against democracy.
Latest EMA shows Tories with a 7.2% lead and an overall majority of 42.
Just a current snap shot. Long way to go yet.
You wonder how many candidates Refuk will actually stand? I doubt it will be a tiny proportion of the 276 seats where Brexit Party stood in 2019. If it is even a thing by the net election.
LibDems threatening single taxi levels again.
I suspect those figures are based on Electoral Calculus rather than UNS. The latter implies 23 Labour gains and a Tory majority of 30.
Old boundaries?
Surely the Tories have a big enough majority to push though new boundaries in time for a 2023 election? Instruct the EC, pull your finger out.... Yet another election on boundaries that are mahoosively out of date would be the bigger crime against democracy.
I don't think Parliament's approval will any longer be required - but the Boundary Commission will not report until mid-2023 implying that Autumn 2023 will be the earliest date for an election based on them.
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
The suggestion that reconnecting with the working class narrative to rebuild Labours support seems to ignore the fact that things have changed and the Tories current playbook of more right wing nationalism culturally and socially allied with less austerity driven policies is going to be quite popular with communities in the more “ working class “ seats .
Labour need either the Tories to go back to austerity or some major economic meltdown to feel they have a decent chance in 2024.
The one benefit re Starmer is he’s not going to terrify voters or be loathed as Corbyn was . Indifference is easier to overcome.
I've got a feeling in my bones that we are, at least for a couple of years going to see some pretty stonking levels of economic growth.
Agreed. At least 5% this year, probably 3-4% next year. Trickier after that.
I think it will expose the superficiality of some of the obsession around growth. Talking about stonking levels of growth - which may amount to nothing more than getting back to output levels pre-covid is the mindset of people looking to invest in the stock market. Not the experience of the average punter.
It should but whether it will or not remains to be seen. Of course if the IMF is right we are going to bounce back from this economic disaster way faster than we did after the GFC.
A lot will depend on employment. The statistics on here a few weeks ago now showed that the total in employment was down but the number of indigenous Brits was significantly up with a reduction in EU and other country employees being more than the fall. If that trend continues Boris will be doing very well but it seems almost too good to be true.
Well in theory you would expect a better recovery than after the GFC since the drop in economic activity was deliberate government policy rather than the exposure of a bubble. I just wonder how much underlying damage has been done during lockdown. Time will tell.
Latest EMA shows Tories with a 7.2% lead and an overall majority of 42.
Just a current snap shot. Long way to go yet.
You wonder how many candidates Refuk will actually stand? I doubt it will be a tiny proportion of the 276 seats where Brexit Party stood in 2019. If it is even a thing by the net election.
LibDems threatening single taxi levels again.
I suspect those figures are based on Electoral Calculus rather than UNS. The latter implies 23 Labour gains and a Tory majority of 30.
Old boundaries?
Surely the Tories have a big enough majority to push though new boundaries in time for a 2023 election? Instruct the EC, pull your finger out.... Yet another election on boundaries that are mahoosively out of date would be the bigger crime against democracy.
Latest EMA shows Tories with a 7.2% lead and an overall majority of 42.
Just a current snap shot. Long way to go yet.
You wonder how many candidates Refuk will actually stand? I doubt it will be a tiny proportion of the 276 seats where Brexit Party stood in 2019. If it is even a thing by the net election.
LibDems threatening single taxi levels again.
I suspect those figures are based on Electoral Calculus rather than UNS. The latter implies 23 Labour gains and a Tory majority of 30.
Old boundaries?
Surely the Tories have a big enough majority to push though new boundaries in time for a 2023 election? Instruct the EC, pull your finger out.... Yet another election on boundaries that are mahoosively out of date would be the bigger crime against democracy.
I don't think Parliament's approval will any longer be required - but the Boundary Commission will not report until mid-2023 implying that Autumn 2023 will be the earliest date for an election based on them.
Correct, it is implemented by an Order in Council:
OT comment and question about trade. Now weve left the single market, ive found buying things from china to be much more expensive, but it seems like some fishy was going on. Aliexpress is an example. Postage costs are often phenominal to ship to uk but free for delivery to countries within the EU. The costs are so great there are closer to that of what might be VAT.
The UK I understand now requires countries selling goods to the UK over a certain amount to collect VAT on their behalf.
My suspicion is that huge volumes of goods get drop shipped into the EU, dont get customs checked and VAT is not actually levied within the EU from the Chinese website, and that control of our borders means that enforcement is now actually happening... Unfortunately to uk consumers this means we end up actually paying more.
Any thoughts or insight into this?
The buyer-pays-VAT reforms that came in here at the start of the year to deal with eg VAT-avoidance on Ebay/Amazon Marketplace are I think due to come in in the EU sometime this year.
That will make a difference, but not to transport costs.
I think the 'transport costs' are a cover to hide the differential pricing. From what you say about the avoidance, it looks like buyers within the EU are been sold goods without VAT been charged, but vat is getting levied for purchases to the UK, and the difference is getting pushed as delivery/transport costs.
I can't see how that works (at least for the consumer). Transport costs (courier/postage) on imports have been included as VATable by HMRC in my experience. To hide it as transport risks paying VAT twice over ...
I wondered if things were being complicated by a reverse Rotterdam effect. When we were in the SM and EU Customs union it probably made sense to deliver most of our imports there first on very large container ships and then distribute within the SM. Now it is more complicated and there may be an incentive to deliver directly to the UK avoiding the EU complications. But this may be not quite as efficient, at least until it is better organised.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
As I mentioned in another reply, while the article mentions AZN, the reply was referring to all vaccines. You can see that in the use of the 37 million dose statistic that he used.
And the EU were/are chucking contract law in the bin to solve their problems. Not that we haven't see this behaviour before. Just look at what happened to the PPE from France.
Which PPE, the useless stuff which Boris/Matt decided to spend money on (really giving the money to their mates?).
I dont agree that the article refers to all vaccines either.
An inability to recognise reality and the facts in front of your nose
The suggestion that reconnecting with the working class narrative to rebuild Labours support seems to ignore the fact that things have changed and the Tories current playbook of more right wing nationalism culturally and socially allied with less austerity driven policies is going to be quite popular with communities in the more “ working class “ seats .
Labour need either the Tories to go back to austerity or some major economic meltdown to feel they have a decent chance in 2024.
The one benefit re Starmer is he’s not going to terrify voters or be loathed as Corbyn was . Indifference is easier to overcome.
I've got a feeling in my bones that we are, at least for a couple of years going to see some pretty stonking levels of economic growth.
Agreed. At least 5% this year, probably 3-4% next year. Trickier after that.
I think it will expose the superficiality of some of the obsession around growth. Talking about stonking levels of growth - which may amount to nothing more than getting back to output levels pre-covid is the mindset of people looking to invest in the stock market. Not the experience of the average punter.
IMHO markets are already looking ahead toward the post-covid spending spree, and much of the upside is already priced in. I don't think it would take much to trigger a correction, and there are various potential triggers on the horizon such as US inflation as they all rush out to spend their $1400, or conflict in Ukraine or with Taiwan. A cautious investor should already be looking to reduce exposure to the potentially more volatile of their investments - which was always traditional advice for April and May in London stockmarket lore in any case (as in "sell in May and go away....")
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
who has been weaponising the border?
The leave campaign decided to ignore the border, and concentrate on winning the vote. They didn't take care. Where are the leave campaigners now? in the Tory government. They are now trying to blame the EU for something they should have taken a lot more care about.
It's something that was barely mentioned at all, by either side, during the campaign.
After the referendum, The UK and Irish governments worked together on resolving the customs issue in the traditional NI way, with a lot of fudge, in order not to inflame the situation.
Varakdar and Barnier then decided to tear up those discussions, and use the NI border as the centre of their plan to 'punish' to UK for voting to leave the EU.
The solution, as ever, is going to be another load of fudge agreed between the UK and Ireland.
Not entirely fair. Both Tony Blair and John Major made speeches warning about the implications for Northern Ireland, and within NI the Alliance Party as well as nationalists made this central to their messaging. As did many politicians in the Republic. The DUP, of course, were at that stage passionately pro-Brexit, and the Leave campaign didn't want to know.
As Deutsche Welle said recently, "Brexit's the problem: Brexit alone can hardly be blamed for the latest flare-up of the deep sectarian conflict that has endured for more than 400 years. But, from the moment that seismic referendum result was confirmed nearly five years ago, it was clear that at least one community in Northern Ireland's fragile, complex divide was going to lose out. Though the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland — whether they be nationalist, unionist or neither — are appalled by the violence, hardly anyone is surprised by it."
IIRC Blair and Major turned up in NI in the closing stages of the campaign, and made a highly partisan speech together that said voting to leave would inflame tensions in NI. I said at the time that their speeches were potentially dangerous, and could end up undermining the GFA - which was for both men one of their greatest political achievements.
After the vote, both governments worked together on a solution, before the new Taoiseach and the EU team decided that the border was to be front and centre in the Brexit talks, rather than dealt with by the adults in the room as a side deal.
Like pretty much everyone else, I'd like to see constructive talks between the UK and Ireland, to agree on a way of working that is acceptable to everyone. The problem is that the EU see the NI border as a wedge issue, they want to cause trouble (for the UK) rather than keep peace in NI.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
Oh, and by the way, I would be careful who you label a deluded idiot, as I suspect as they years go by 17.8 million people will start to get annoyed with you.
You're a completely deluded idiot, I just wish you were in France waiting endlessly for a vaccine, given that you clearly hate this country and love the EU.
This “hate this country” line that a handful of PB’ers regularly trot out is very tiresome. It is perfectly possible to be very pro-European and still proud of being British. Indeed our country’s long and significant contribution to the development and direction of the EU is something about which to be particularly proud.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planed bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
A French politician who spent most of his career under criminal investigation and works for Ursula von der Leyen has not been entirely straight?
And in next week’s news, a bear shits in the woods.
In French political circles he’s viewed as untrustworthy and a liar
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
Oh, and by the way, I would be careful who you label a deluded idiot, as I suspect as they years go by 17.8 million people will start to get annoyed with you.
You're a completely deluded idiot, I just wish you were in France waiting endlessly for a vaccine, given that you clearly hate this country and love the EU.
This “hate this country” line that a handful of PB’ers regularly trot out is very tiresome. It is perfectly possible to be very pro-European and still proud of being British. Indeed our country’s long and significant contribution to the development and direction of the EU is something about which to be particularly proud.
Although the EU are trying their damndest to make it very hard to be pro-European at the moment.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
As I mentioned in another reply, while the article mentions AZN, the reply was referring to all vaccines. You can see that in the use of the 37 million dose statistic that he used.
And the EU were/are chucking contract law in the bin to solve their problems. Not that we haven't see this behaviour before. Just look at what happened to the PPE from France.
Which PPE, the useless stuff which Boris/Matt decided to spend money on (really giving the money to their mates?).
I dont agree that the article refers to all vaccines either.
An inability to recognise reality and the facts in front of your nose
You are Ursula and I claim my 5 pounds
As @Leon would say he's got Strasbourg Syndrome. Honestly, the nation would be greatly improved if all of them just fucked off.
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planed bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
A French politician who spent most of his career under criminal investigation and works for Ursula von der Leyen has not been entirely straight?
And in next week’s news, a bear shits in the woods.
In French political circles he’s viewed as untrustworthy and a liar
No wonder he’s had such a successful career in French politics then
OT comment and question about trade. Now weve left the single market, ive found buying things from china to be much more expensive, but it seems like some fishy was going on. Aliexpress is an example. Postage costs are often phenominal to ship to uk but free for delivery to countries within the EU. The costs are so great there are closer to that of what might be VAT.
The UK I understand now requires countries selling goods to the UK over a certain amount to collect VAT on their behalf.
My suspicion is that huge volumes of goods get drop shipped into the EU, dont get customs checked and VAT is not actually levied within the EU from the Chinese website, and that control of our borders means that enforcement is now actually happening... Unfortunately to uk consumers this means we end up actually paying more.
Any thoughts or insight into this?
The buyer-pays-VAT reforms that came in here at the start of the year to deal with eg VAT-avoidance on Ebay/Amazon Marketplace are I think due to come in in the EU sometime this year.
That will make a difference, but not to transport costs.
I think the 'transport costs' are a cover to hide the differential pricing. From what you say about the avoidance, it looks like buyers within the EU are been sold goods without VAT been charged, but vat is getting levied for purchases to the UK, and the difference is getting pushed as delivery/transport costs.
I can't see how that works (at least for the consumer). Transport costs (courier/postage) on imports have been included as VATable by HMRC in my experience. To hide it as transport risks paying VAT twice over ...
AIUI
They aren’t VAT registered so Amazon withholds VAT from the revenues they forward on. The supplier increases the postage cost to claw back the money
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
Oh, and by the way, I would be careful who you label a deluded idiot, as I suspect as they years go by 17.8 million people will start to get annoyed with you.
You're a completely deluded idiot, I just wish you were in France waiting endlessly for a vaccine, given that you clearly hate this country and love the EU.
OIC, we are reduced to the "hate this country" arguement. How sad. I can criticise the government as much as I want, that's democracy. For your information, I love my country as much as anyone else, and I like the EU, which you obviously don't. Have you discovered a new irregular verb?
I am deluded, You are completely deluded the 17.8 million are deluded idiots?
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
who has been weaponising the border?
The leave campaign decided to ignore the border, and concentrate on winning the vote. They didn't take care. Where are the leave campaigners now? in the Tory government. They are now trying to blame the EU for something they should have taken a lot more care about.
It's something that was barely mentioned at all, by either side, during the campaign.
After the referendum, The UK and Irish governments worked together on resolving the customs issue in the traditional NI way, with a lot of fudge, in order not to inflame the situation.
Varakdar and Barnier then decided to tear up those discussions, and use the NI border as the centre of their plan to 'punish' to UK for voting to leave the EU.
The solution, as ever, is going to be another load of fudge agreed between the UK and Ireland.
Not entirely fair. Both Tony Blair and John Major made speeches warning about the implications for Northern Ireland, and within NI the Alliance Party as well as nationalists made this central to their messaging. As did many politicians in the Republic. The DUP, of course, were at that stage passionately pro-Brexit, and the Leave campaign didn't want to know.
As Deutsche Welle said recently, "Brexit's the problem: Brexit alone can hardly be blamed for the latest flare-up of the deep sectarian conflict that has endured for more than 400 years. But, from the moment that seismic referendum result was confirmed nearly five years ago, it was clear that at least one community in Northern Ireland's fragile, complex divide was going to lose out. Though the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland — whether they be nationalist, unionist or neither — are appalled by the violence, hardly anyone is surprised by it."
I agree that the Irish Question was well flagged up even before the referendum. It may well have been more salient ijn Scotland which is a lot nearer NI than London, but I seem to recall the reaction from the Brexiter Tories around November 2016 when it became clear just how insoluble the GFA Agreement was when it came to Brexit.
I was going to link to this piece as a example of the general views of Brexiteer Tories on NI and then remembered oor Kate is/was Labour, so easy to forget!
The Greensill affair- more details in today's Sunday Times - gets worse and worse.
Potentially the corruption of the chumocracy is the Achilles heel of this government. It is something that Starmer should be very strong on, given his legal background. Likely to play well in the Purple Wall too. People don't like being ripped off.
Is the Observer suggesting here that we should only reopen when all LA’s are at or below the national average in number of cases? If so I have a maths textbook I can lend them (also Clackmannanshire was in Scotland last I checked and thus is not directly effected by the English timetable...).
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
Oh, and by the way, I would be careful who you label a deluded idiot, as I suspect as they years go by 17.8 million people will start to get annoyed with you.
You're a completely deluded idiot, I just wish you were in France waiting endlessly for a vaccine, given that you clearly hate this country and love the EU.
This “hate this country” line that a handful of PB’ers regularly trot out is very tiresome. It is perfectly possible to be very pro-European and still proud of being British. Indeed our country’s long and significant contribution to the development and direction of the EU is something about which to be particularly proud.
That's not what's happening though, we have people who will do absolutely anything to deny the blatantly fucking obvious that the EU has fucked this up and the UK hasn't, it's not the first time either. There's a certain section of society (and I'm not talking about you or the vast majority of people who voted remain) who want the UK to fail, they want to take revenge on this country for voting to leave and it hurts them inside to see the UK succeed outside of the EU.
She’s telegenic, always has something interesting to say, is not the “woke” caricature that people might think she is, is sound on foreign policy, and comes from impeccable left-wing academic heritage but is not a wonk.
Not so sure about the "impeccable left-wing academic heritage" bit, but her grandfather was Liberal Chief Whip in the Commons, and later a Liberal peer. He was always on Question Time, or its equialent. And he always talked good sense.
The question for you is what has she inherited from her ancestry and from whom?
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
As I mentioned in another reply, while the article mentions AZN, the reply was referring to all vaccines. You can see that in the use of the 37 million dose statistic that he used.
And the EU were/are chucking contract law in the bin to solve their problems. Not that we haven't see this behaviour before. Just look at what happened to the PPE from France.
Which PPE, the useless stuff which Boris/Matt decided to spend money on (really giving the money to their mates?).
I dont agree that the article refers to all vaccines either.
An inability to recognise reality and the facts in front of your nose
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
As I mentioned in another reply, while the article mentions AZN, the reply was referring to all vaccines. You can see that in the use of the 37 million dose statistic that he used.
And the EU were/are chucking contract law in the bin to solve their problems. Not that we haven't see this behaviour before. Just look at what happened to the PPE from France.
Which PPE, the useless stuff which Boris/Matt decided to spend money on (really giving the money to their mates?).
I dont agree that the article refers to all vaccines either.
An inability to recognise reality and the facts in front of your nose
You are Ursula and I claim my 5 pounds
As @Leon would say he's got Strasbourg Syndrome. Honestly, the nation would be greatly improved if all of them just fucked off.
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
who has been weaponising the border?
The leave campaign decided to ignore the border, and concentrate on winning the vote. They didn't take care. Where are the leave campaigners now? in the Tory government. They are now trying to blame the EU for something they should have taken a lot more care about.
I see the usual suspects are out blaming the EU for 'politicising' the Irish border. Jonathan Powell, whatever you think of him, has written a good piece in the Observer.
The first couple of paragraphs are pretty succinct:
'The Northern Ireland conundrum over Brexit was always insoluble. As John Major and Tony Blair pointed out in the referendum campaign, if the UK left the single market and customs union there had to be a border somewhere, either on the island of Ireland or in the Irish Sea. In either case, someone’s rights were going to be hurt: nationalists or unionists.
In December 2019, Boris Johnson opted to put the border in the Irish Sea to get his Brexit deal over the line. He then chose to lie about it, live on TV, saying there would be no border and that no one would have to fill in any forms. At first, the unionist response was muted. Arlene Foster even said NI had the best of both worlds.'
Said it before, but the GFA really ought to have been put a vote in GB.
But then you could say that about all the other EU stuff.
The Greensill affair- more details in today's Sunday Times - gets worse and worse.
Potentially the corruption of the chumocracy is the Achilles heel of this government. It is something that Starmer should be very strong on, given his legal background. Likely to play well in the Purple Wall too. People don't like being ripped off.
And yet Labour are largely leaving it alone or misfiring - see my post the other day about the questions they ought to be asking instead of the few they are.
Is the Observer suggesting here that we should only reopen when all LA’s are at or below the national average in number of cases? If so I have a maths textbook I can lend them (also Clackmannanshire was in Scotland last I checked and thus is not directly effected by the English timetable...).
No, I think they were implying that there should be some local variation in unlocking. It seems that Tiers have been scrapped.
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
It is indeed sad that the EU chose to weaponise the NI border in the negotiations, rather than continue the project started by Enda Kenny to depoliticise the issue ahead of the Brexit talks.
who has been weaponising the border?
The leave campaign decided to ignore the border, and concentrate on winning the vote. They didn't take care. Where are the leave campaigners now? in the Tory government. They are now trying to blame the EU for something they should have taken a lot more care about.
It's something that was barely mentioned at all, by either side, during the campaign.
After the referendum, The UK and Irish governments worked together on resolving the customs issue in the traditional NI way, with a lot of fudge, in order not to inflame the situation.
Varakdar and Barnier then decided to tear up those discussions, and use the NI border as the centre of their plan to 'punish' to UK for voting to leave the EU.
The solution, as ever, is going to be another load of fudge agreed between the UK and Ireland.
Not entirely fair. Both Tony Blair and John Major made speeches warning about the implications for Northern Ireland, and within NI the Alliance Party as well as nationalists made this central to their messaging. As did many politicians in the Republic. The DUP, of course, were at that stage passionately pro-Brexit, and the Leave campaign didn't want to know.
As Deutsche Welle said recently, "Brexit's the problem: Brexit alone can hardly be blamed for the latest flare-up of the deep sectarian conflict that has endured for more than 400 years. But, from the moment that seismic referendum result was confirmed nearly five years ago, it was clear that at least one community in Northern Ireland's fragile, complex divide was going to lose out. Though the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland — whether they be nationalist, unionist or neither — are appalled by the violence, hardly anyone is surprised by it."
I agree that the Irish Question was well flagged up even before the referendum. It may well have been more salient ijn Scotland which is a lot nearer NI than London, but I seem to recall the reaction from the Brexiter Tories around November 2016 when it became clear just how insoluble the GFA Agreement was when it came to Brexit.
I was going to link to this piece as a example of the general views of Brexiteer Tories on NI and then remembered oor Kate is/was Labour, so easy to forget!
The Greensill affair- more details in today's Sunday Times - gets worse and worse.
Potentially the corruption of the chumocracy is the Achilles heel of this government. It is something that Starmer should be very strong on, given his legal background. Likely to play well in the Purple Wall too. People don't like being ripped off.
And yet Labour are largely leaving it alone or misfiring - see my post the other day about the questions they ought to be asking instead of the few they are.
They could - and should! - also be asking where the money for PPE, sanitiser etc has gone. There is a less than pretty story to be told around some of that. Like Grayling and his ferries, but much worse.
She’s telegenic, always has something interesting to say, is not the “woke” caricature that people might think she is, is sound on foreign policy, and comes from impeccable left-wing academic heritage but is not a wonk.
Not so sure about the "impeccable left-wing academic heritage" bit, but her grandfather was Liberal Chief Whip in the Commons, and later a Liberal peer. He was always on Question Time, or its equialent. And he always talked good sense.
The question for you is what has she inherited from her ancestry and from whom?
Sandpit - the EU took the approach it did to NI because the Irish government insisted upon it. They were determined not to see the return of a practical border in Ireland. All 27 governments agreed on a common negotiating position to give to Barnier. The idea that the EU was the driving force behind the Irish border issue is just brexiteer fiction.
What you might say is that they insisted on a border with a party that wasn't in the customs union. But again that was more about preserving their own market and is what happens all over the world.
The Greensill affair- more details in today's Sunday Times - gets worse and worse.
Potentially the corruption of the chumocracy is the Achilles heel of this government. It is something that Starmer should be very strong on, given his legal background. Likely to play well in the Purple Wall too. People don't like being ripped off.
And yet Labour are largely leaving it alone or misfiring - see my post the other day about the questions they ought to be asking instead of the few they are.
They could - and should! - also be asking where the money for PPE, sanitiser etc has gone. There is a less than pretty story to be told around some of that. Like Grayling and his ferries, but much worse.
There are also serious questions about why the government is going out to tender now on a scheme virtually identical to that Greensill was offering. Why? What is the advantage to taxpayers? Who benefits? And by how much?
Interesting language from EU’s Thierry Breton on EU vaccine export ban and implications for UK
“Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, only one produces.... In other words, the UK is largely dependent on the EU for its vaccination campaign.
It's also laughably wrong. We have 2 active sites manufacturing vaccine substance for AZ and one bottling site for it. For Novavax we have one site producing substance and another bottling it. For Valneva we have one making the substance and another planned bottling site. For CureVac a new manufacturing partner is being sought by GSK for domestic production of the gen 2 vaccine. So that's 5 sites for vaccines approved or nearing approval and maximum monthly capacity of 40m doses per month post ramp up plus 1 more commencing manufacturing of substance in the next few weeks now that the Valneva PII trial has been a huge success and another site planned for late this year for CureVac.
He was asked about the astra vaccine.
It's still wrong, we have two sites making vaccine substance and one site doing bottling.
Well maybe, but you were putting your usual anti EU spin by quoting stuff which was irrelevant to what he said.
Lol, so some EU chump lies about the UK's vaccine manufacturing capacity and the people pointing out the lies are wrong to do so?
You deluded idiot.
I may be deluded, but not by you. You are a typical right wing anti eu who has always had your own agenda on things. The article referred to Astra so you immediately spun it to suit your own agenda. Suffice to say that as far as astra is concerned, the company who makes it is a joint uk/belgian company. More were made in europe so the EU has exported more to the UK than the other direction. When Boris and his fanboys do things specifically to help uk only, then he is great. When VDL tries to do things to help eu only, then she's a villain. As I say, I know exactly what you are about.
As I mentioned in another reply, while the article mentions AZN, the reply was referring to all vaccines. You can see that in the use of the 37 million dose statistic that he used.
And the EU were/are chucking contract law in the bin to solve their problems. Not that we haven't see this behaviour before. Just look at what happened to the PPE from France.
Which PPE, the useless stuff which Boris/Matt decided to spend money on (really giving the money to their mates?).
I dont agree that the article refers to all vaccines either.
An inability to recognise reality and the facts in front of your nose
You are Ursula and I claim my 5 pounds
As @Leon would say he's got Strasbourg Syndrome. Honestly, the nation would be greatly improved if all of them just fucked off.
Deportations now?
Just be grateful that you're not posting from Germany, a slavering mob wielding pitchforks and flaming torches would be chasing you off the site right now.
Is the Observer suggesting here that we should only reopen when all LA’s are at or below the national average in number of cases? If so I have a maths textbook I can lend them (also Clackmannanshire was in Scotland last I checked and thus is not directly effected by the English timetable...).
No, I think they were implying that there should be some local variation in unlocking. It seems that Tiers have been scrapped.
Doesn’t come across like that in the article. It expressly suggests Johnson should “wait” before introducing Monday’s (England national) relaxation, impliedly because some areas are above average, as if probability distribution doesn’t exist.
I'm sceptical of the standard 'Senior Tories, including cabinet ministers' bs but the point is certainly correct, Unionists will have to decide if there's a point beyond which a referendum can't be won.
Comments
Not keen on the other options, the greens, blacks, yellows etc.
I lived in the SoF for a short while and used to pop to MC quite often, just to mooch around. The peacock parade of Ferraris (and similar such as Lambos etc) in the square near the casino was quite something to see.
All cars in MC were either lavish "look what I've got" affairs or diddy little smart cars.
What a carry on.
Even when the case for outsourcing is negative. As in costing more.
I swear that if I hear another pompous fool declaiming "not our core business".....
“I’m just going to bet on the Peruvian election”
‘There is a politician who while capable, has always had around his actions a suspicion of dishonesty.’
‘In the present state of politics, that remark will not serve to identify any one man.’
The leave campaign decided to ignore the border, and concentrate on winning the vote. They didn't take care. Where are the leave campaigners now? in the Tory government. They are now trying to blame the EU for something they should have taken a lot more care about.
Printing money is less of an issue when all your major competitors are doing the same
The income side of the deficit is as significant as the expenditure. Both will be a problem for Sunak.
Thatcherism the reality included taxpayer subsidy for coalmining and 60% income tax.
That Enda Kenny working furiously in JSON on facial recognition for pigs thing was just one of David "Dave" Davieses's many lies.
But has similar happened in Europe, Australia, Canada etc ?
https://twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1381049002615967746?s=19
He is pretty certain to make the second round, in what I understand is a French type system.
* This Land: The Story of a Movement.
You deluded idiot.
Being part of the EU was hugely helpful in sustaining our own country; not only the unusual status of Northern Ireland with republicans able to feel closer to Ireland within the EU, but also helping to keep a lid on separatism within Scotland, which could pull its weight as part of 'Europe of the Regions'. Similarly it helps make workable the semi-autonomous position of regions like Alto Adige in Italy, where most people don't even speak Italian: if Italy ever left the EU, any consequential barriers to trade or movement between SudTirolers and their Austrian cousins to the North would instantly become a huge political issue.
Our PM thought he could just ignore such considerations and press ahead regardless, making whatever promises he need to make to keep everyone happy meanwhile. As with his similar handling of women, such an approach to life comes back to bite, sooner or later.
After the referendum, The UK and Irish governments worked together on resolving the customs issue in the traditional NI way, with a lot of fudge, in order not to inflame the situation.
Varakdar and Barnier then decided to tear up those discussions, and use the NI border as the centre of their plan to 'punish' to UK for voting to leave the EU.
The solution, as ever, is going to be another load of fudge agreed between the UK and Ireland.
Also see what @MattW wrote.
As for Meghan if I were nearly 40, in the advanced stages of pregnancy and had had a miscarriage I wouldn't travel either. But in any case, she barely knew Prince Philip and there are others like his nephew and niece who would have a greater claim to be present than her, given the restrictions on numbers.
Surely the Tories have a big enough majority to push though new boundaries in time for a 2023 election? Instruct the EC, pull your finger out.... Yet another election on boundaries that are mahoosively out of date would be the bigger crime against democracy.
Since every Peruvian President ends up in jail, there's that to look forward to.
Should be a win win.
The main question is which of the carnival of freaks will be there with him.
Peruvian history suggests that we start placing bets on the length of his first prison sentence for corruption, now.
EDIT - double checked the polling. Looks like he has dropped back quite a bit. The Shining Path stuff is still pretty toxic in Peru... Yonhy *seems* at the front now...
As Deutsche Welle said recently, "Brexit's the problem: Brexit alone can hardly be blamed for the latest flare-up of the deep sectarian conflict that has endured for more than 400 years. But, from the moment that seismic referendum result was confirmed nearly five years ago, it was clear that at least one community in Northern Ireland's fragile, complex divide was going to lose out. Though the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland — whether they be nationalist, unionist or neither — are appalled by the violence, hardly anyone is surprised by it."
Oh, and by the way, I would be careful who you label a deluded idiot, as I suspect as they years go by 17.8 million people will start to get annoyed with you.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/11/boris-johnson-posturing-has-put-northern-ireland-fragile-peace-at-grave-risk
The first couple of paragraphs are pretty succinct:
'The Northern Ireland conundrum over Brexit was always insoluble. As John Major and Tony Blair pointed out in the referendum campaign, if the UK left the single market and customs union there had to be a border somewhere, either on the island of Ireland or in the Irish Sea. In either case, someone’s rights were going to be hurt: nationalists or unionists.
In December 2019, Boris Johnson opted to put the border in the Irish Sea to get his Brexit deal over the line. He then chose to lie about it, live on TV, saying there would be no border and that no one would have to fill in any forms. At first, the unionist response was muted. Arlene Foster even said NI had the best of both worlds.'
And the EU were/are chucking contract law in the bin to solve their problems. Not that we haven't see this behaviour before. Just look at what happened to the PPE from France.
The further point being, the EU failed to buy the vaccines in time because they wanted to bargain on price. We bought early and paid extra. We own the doses, not the EU. They got what they paid for. The fact they don’t now like what they paid for is their problem.
A lot will depend on employment. The statistics on here a few weeks ago now showed that the total in employment was down but the number of indigenous Brits was significantly up with a reduction in EU and other country employees being more than the fall. If that trend continues Boris will be doing very well but it seems almost too good to be true.
I dont agree that the article refers to all vaccines either.
*See the efforts of Alan Garcia
"Hey, Fat Tony, I want odds on which of the heads of the Five Families gets to be head of the Commission."
https://www.ft.com/content/8c0a29fc-a523-4901-a190-fe5a2dcc8faa
Have you read the article? Unless there have been 37 million jabs of AZN administered in the UK, he is talking about all of them.
https://twitter.com/usosce/status/1380915677721206789
And Russian tv making noises about saving Russians from Ukrainian aggression
I do fear they are going to go for it
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05929/
You are Ursula and I claim my 5 pounds
After the vote, both governments worked together on a solution, before the new Taoiseach and the EU team decided that the border was to be front and centre in the Brexit talks, rather than dealt with by the adults in the room as a side deal.
Like pretty much everyone else, I'd like to see constructive talks between the UK and Ireland, to agree on a way of working that is acceptable to everyone. The problem is that the EU see the NI border as a wedge issue, they want to cause trouble (for the UK) rather than keep peace in NI.
They aren’t VAT registered so Amazon withholds VAT from the revenues they forward on. The supplier increases the postage cost to claw back the money
I am deluded,
You are completely deluded
the 17.8 million are deluded idiots?
https://twitter.com/trevorw1953/status/1380103438458060804?s=20
The question for you is what has she inherited from her ancestry and from whom?
But then you could say that about all the other EU stuff.
‘Ironic’, I think his name was. Or something like that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipak_Nandy
What you might say is that they insisted on a border with a party that wasn't in the customs union. But again that was more about preserving their own market and is what happens all over the world.