BREAKING: Switzerland cancels ratification of framework agreement with EU. "Based on the results of negotiations in recent months, the [Swiss] Federal Council has determined that the talks with the EU ... haven't led to the necessary solutions," said Swiss President Guy Parmelin.
I think both Norway and Switzerland are going to have to join the EU and sooner rather than later. Meanwhile our mickey mouse trade deals with economies we can´t actually do much trade with do not make up for the total shambles of the collapse in EU/UK trade. Then in 5 years time, when we ask to effectively rejoin, we get locked out and the EFTA half way house is not available. That really is shooting yourself in the foot.
That is a truly ridiculous comment. Neither Norway or Switzerland are going to join the EU. Indeed the chances of that ever happening have been receding for a good few decades. Likewise the UK. Now we are out we are out effectively for good. The EU will either become a much closer union which we will find unacceptable or they will break up. I suspect it will actually be a combination of the two with federalisation at some point but with some countries leaving entirely at the same time. Certainly far more realistic prospect than the UK rejoining.
BREAKING: Switzerland cancels ratification of framework agreement with EU. "Based on the results of negotiations in recent months, the [Swiss] Federal Council has determined that the talks with the EU ... haven't led to the necessary solutions," said Swiss President Guy Parmelin.
Not really, our deal has better flexibility that EFTA membership and we have completely escaped ECJ jurisdiction which EFTA membership would still have, though to a lesser degree than EEA membership.
Hang on: if we were just party to the EFTA part (i.e. trade with Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein), then we'd be bound to follow the decisions of the EFTA Court, but the ECJ wouldn't have a say would it? It'd only be if we wanted to be a part of EFTA/EEA that would be an issue. And given we (like Switzerland) have our own separate side deal with the EU, that probably wouldn't be an issue.
If some think that the EU is the same as the EEA, the CU, EFTA etc then of course we would be bound by the ECJ. Just as having left and become a 3rd country we are definitely not bound by the WTO no siree.
I don't understand the point you are making. If we are members of EFTA but not of the EEA then we are neither bound by the ECJ or the EFTA court - the latter is specifically set up to adjudicate on EFTA decisions related to the EEA and has no jurisdiction to deal with more general EFTA matters which are outside the EEA.
And of course we are party to WTO rules as long as we are a member.
My point was sarcasm. Some people insist we would always have been slaves of the feared ECJ had we not become a 3rd country, and that we can just ignore WTO rules now having done so.
This is a misunderstanding. No-one sensible has ever said that a country can't or shouldn't choose to bind itself to rules within the international order. But in many cases when in the EU you don't have a choice, lots of choices normally belonging to a state are made by this elaborate trade association possessing increasing state like trappings.
Most Brexit supporters do want to be in the WTO, but all Brexit supporters want it to be a UK decision.
Too much money and not enough sense. If they've that amount of money to throw away they could at least knock a couple of hundred quid off that new camera I want.
Hospitalisations. That's the key. Do we have the number?
The hospital patient total is 954 as of Monday. There's nothing to suggest that it's about to start skyrocketing again. Steady as she goes.
We've got another week or so to go until we see if the VOCs are having a serious effect. Bolton figures showing a rise in admissions and ITU.
But we already know that the variant isn't spreading like wildfire as per the Kent Plague, and that most of the new hospital admissions are amongst the unvaccinated.
The jabs are working. We are not going back to January.
Frankly it doesn't much matter if the number of Covid patients doubles or triples in a few isolated hotspots. If the hospitals begin to struggle then you simply chuck the excess sufferers into the backs of a flotilla of ambulances and distribute them amongst the numerous hospitals that have less than 5 remaining Covid cases left to treat. Job done.
Mr. Leon, Sturgeon being an idiot is no reason to destroy a nation.
Devolution is a disaster. Especially the botched, stupid, asymmetric devolution given us by Labour. Boris is right
Anecdote: at my last large family gathering I was struck by the family members who were seriously anti-union and anti-Scottish. They used to be apathetic, now they are averse. Let Scotland go. Cut them away. This is a growing feeling in England. It will be England that ends the Union, if it ends
My family is not alone
‘MICHAEL Gove has been warned by a Tory MP that the Union could end through "benign neglect" as voters in England give up on it just as they did with the EU.
The Cabinet Office minister was told by Jackie Doyle-Price that her constituents in Thurrock in Essex now griped about Scotland they way they used to about Brussels.
She said for many people in England the Union was not a “living entity”and urged UK ministers to do more to help people understand and appreciate it.’
The main problem is it is no longer a Union as such but a Federal UK excluding England.
Give England its own Parliament or at least English regional assemblies and the problem would be resolved
no it wouldn't - a UK government would only be allowed to work if the constituent nations accepted the federal government and allowed the federal government to control the overall economic direction of the nation, its defence etc- the English government let alone others would have no incentive to do this - a federal UK could only work if you broke England into pieces so no part was too powerful, and why should England want that?
The UK government already does control the overall economic direction and defence of the whole UK. Just England is the only country in the UK which does not have its own Parliament to run the rest of its domestic policy.
There is no reason an English Parliament would not work other than leftwingers don't want it as it would normally have a Tory majority, otherwise we should at least have regional assemblies which would still be better than the current situation where England has no government of its own at national or regional level outside of the UK (except in the London region with the Mayor and Assembly)
this is nuts - if there were an English government it would be like the SNP on steroids - questioning every single action of the UK govt and attempting to delegitimise it, be allowed to 'approve' its decisions etc - the UK is not suited to be a federation as England dominates - everybody who has thought about this for more than 10 minutes understands this.
I remmeber a particularly interesting and illuminating discussion on PB about 2012-13 which came to an almost unanimous conclusion (quite unusual for that time and general topic of indyref) that true federalism was a non-runner in the UK because of precisely what you say, plus the political unacceptability of breaking up England a la Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.
This is one reason why Gordon Brown's repeated Interventions with promises of more federalism have not, er, had much effect.
England doesn't need to be broken up within a Federal system, and the more it is broken up within that system, the more it dominates, as the 'more Englands' there are, the more they can out-vote the other home nations. Indeed, if England is broken up in a way that is commensurate with its population size, it totally swamps the other home nations, and defeats the entire object of federalisation. It becomes Westminster MPs mark 2.
I've made this argument to you a few times, and you've never made a counter-argument, so I'm surprised that you persist in the nonsense that England would need to be broken up to make a federal system work.
Hmm, that actually assumes a homogeneous England. If it is, then you are quite right. But if not, not.
You do realise you're undermining the SNP's whole argument on the hopelessness of Scotland's position wrt Westminster by saying that? English MP's aren't 'homogenous' either. Yet it's portrayed as Scotland being overruled by England.
That's because there is a majoritarian phenomenon in England under FPTP at Westminster, ie the Tories usually winning being part of it. PR would put a very different perspective on the entire matter.
But given that each English Parliament would have a ruling party (and presumably most would be Tory at the moment), that effect would surely be magnified?
The whole point of a federal structure is surely that in some circumstances, England counts as 'just a nation' among nations, and is not granted more influence by virtue of its large population - it 'takes one for the team'. I am comfortable with that. The desire to break England into cantons runs wholly counter to that aim. Scotland and Wales would in effect be 'other Yorkshires' - something which many would strongly object to.
Shocker: Man sacked by PM is bitter about being sacked and lashes out at team he was part of.
Hmm... think much of this is already priced in, and many people will view Cummings evidence as somewhat tainted by his sacking and his trip up North.
It's the revelations about the dog that will be most damaging.
If people do think that then they are bloody stupid.
I didn't say they were correct in their analysis, but I do think there will be a bit of prurient interest form within the village, but a large slug of "meh", too. But being mean about a dog...that's not cricket.
Especially after making so much of the unfortunate hound on the cameras for PR purposes.
Not quite Cruella De Vil (wrong gender for a start, also less well dressed) but the principle stands.
Hospitalisations. That's the key. Do we have the number?
The hospital patient total is 954 as of Monday. There's nothing to suggest that it's about to start skyrocketing again. Steady as she goes.
We've got another week or so to go until we see if the VOCs are having a serious effect. Bolton figures showing a rise in admissions and ITU.
But we already know that the variant isn't spreading like wildfire as per the Kent Plague, and that most of the new hospital admissions are amongst the unvaccinated.
The jabs are working. We are not going back to January.
Frankly it doesn't much matter if the number of Covid patients doubles or triples in a few isolated hotspots. If the hospitals begin to struggle then you simply chuck the excess sufferers into the backs of a flotilla of ambulances and distribute them amongst the numerous hospitals that have less than 5 remaining Covid cases left to treat. Job done.
Absolutely. It is a testament to the vaccine. It's unlikely to have a serious impact - but we shouldn;t fully count the chickens for another week or so.
Mr. Leon, Sturgeon being an idiot is no reason to destroy a nation.
Devolution is a disaster. Especially the botched, stupid, asymmetric devolution given us by Labour. Boris is right
Anecdote: at my last large family gathering I was struck by the family members who were seriously anti-union and anti-Scottish. They used to be apathetic, now they are averse. Let Scotland go. Cut them away. This is a growing feeling in England. It will be England that ends the Union, if it ends
My family is not alone
‘MICHAEL Gove has been warned by a Tory MP that the Union could end through "benign neglect" as voters in England give up on it just as they did with the EU.
The Cabinet Office minister was told by Jackie Doyle-Price that her constituents in Thurrock in Essex now griped about Scotland they way they used to about Brussels.
She said for many people in England the Union was not a “living entity”and urged UK ministers to do more to help people understand and appreciate it.’
The main problem is it is no longer a Union as such but a Federal UK excluding England.
Give England its own Parliament or at least English regional assemblies and the problem would be resolved
no it wouldn't - a UK government would only be allowed to work if the constituent nations accepted the federal government and allowed the federal government to control the overall economic direction of the nation, its defence etc- the English government let alone others would have no incentive to do this - a federal UK could only work if you broke England into pieces so no part was too powerful, and why should England want that?
The UK government already does control the overall economic direction and defence of the whole UK. Just England is the only country in the UK which does not have its own Parliament to run the rest of its domestic policy.
There is no reason an English Parliament would not work other than leftwingers don't want it as it would normally have a Tory majority, otherwise we should at least have regional assemblies which would still be better than the current situation where England has no government of its own at national or regional level outside of the UK (except in the London region with the Mayor and Assembly)
this is nuts - if there were an English government it would be like the SNP on steroids - questioning every single action of the UK govt and attempting to delegitimise it, be allowed to 'approve' its decisions etc - the UK is not suited to be a federation as England dominates - everybody who has thought about this for more than 10 minutes understands this.
I remmeber a particularly interesting and illuminating discussion on PB about 2012-13 which came to an almost unanimous conclusion (quite unusual for that time and general topic of indyref) that true federalism was a non-runner in the UK because of precisely what you say, plus the political unacceptability of breaking up England a la Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.
This is one reason why Gordon Brown's repeated Interventions with promises of more federalism have not, er, had much effect.
England doesn't need to be broken up within a Federal system, and the more it is broken up within that system, the more it dominates, as the 'more Englands' there are, the more they can out-vote the other home nations. Indeed, if England is broken up in a way that is commensurate with its population size, it totally swamps the other home nations, and defeats the entire object of federalisation. It becomes Westminster MPs mark 2.
I've made this argument to you a few times, and you've never made a counter-argument, so I'm surprised that you persist in the nonsense that England would need to be broken up to make a federal system work.
Hmm, that actually assumes a homogeneous England. If it is, then you are quite right. But if not, not.
You do realise you're undermining the SNP's whole argument on the hopelessness of Scotland's position wrt Westminster by saying that? English MP's aren't 'homogenous' either. Yet it's portrayed as Scotland being overruled by England.
That's because there is a majoritarian phenomenon in England under FPTP at Westminster, ie the Tories usually winning being part of it. PR would put a very different perspective on the entire matter.
But given that each English Parliament would have a ruling party (and presumably most would be Tory at the moment), that effect would surely be magnified?
The whole point of a federal structure is surely that in some circumstances, England counts as 'just a nation' among nations, and is not granted more influence by virtue of its large population - it 'takes one for the team'. I am comfortable with that. The desire to break England into cantons runs wholly counter to that aim. Scotland and Wales would in effect be 'other Yorkshires' - something which many would strongly object to.
That's the issue - either England accepts that the other nations have a veto (in effect) which would upset a lot of its voters ('why should we count for no more than the Nirish?', they might say). Or it doesn't, and therefore either overrides the other nations by population share, or by being broken up into cantons.
BREAKING: Switzerland cancels ratification of framework agreement with EU. "Based on the results of negotiations in recent months, the [Swiss] Federal Council has determined that the talks with the EU ... haven't led to the necessary solutions," said Swiss President Guy Parmelin.
Not really, our deal has better flexibility that EFTA membership and we have completely escaped ECJ jurisdiction which EFTA membership would still have, though to a lesser degree than EEA membership.
Hang on: if we were just party to the EFTA part (i.e. trade with Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein), then we'd be bound to follow the decisions of the EFTA Court, but the ECJ wouldn't have a say would it? It'd only be if we wanted to be a part of EFTA/EEA that would be an issue. And given we (like Switzerland) have our own separate side deal with the EU, that probably wouldn't be an issue.
If some think that the EU is the same as the EEA, the CU, EFTA etc then of course we would be bound by the ECJ. Just as having left and become a 3rd country we are definitely not bound by the WTO no siree.
I don't understand the point you are making. If we are members of EFTA but not of the EEA then we are neither bound by the ECJ or the EFTA court - the latter is specifically set up to adjudicate on EFTA decisions related to the EEA and has no jurisdiction to deal with more general EFTA matters which are outside the EEA.
And of course we are party to WTO rules as long as we are a member.
My point was sarcasm. Some people insist we would always have been slaves of the feared ECJ had we not become a 3rd country, and that we can just ignore WTO rules now having done so.
Apologies I missed the point. A limit of the internet not of your writing.
As you probably know I am a big advocate of EFTA membership. Since I am in favour of open borders I would also have ben happy with EEA membership. CU membership is just impossible due to the EUs own treaty rules.
Indeed. We could have created a CU-lite arrangement where we are not members of The CU but avoid the customs catastrofuck we are suffering.
Mr. Leon, Sturgeon being an idiot is no reason to destroy a nation.
Devolution is a disaster. Especially the botched, stupid, asymmetric devolution given us by Labour. Boris is right
Anecdote: at my last large family gathering I was struck by the family members who were seriously anti-union and anti-Scottish. They used to be apathetic, now they are averse. Let Scotland go. Cut them away. This is a growing feeling in England. It will be England that ends the Union, if it ends
My family is not alone
‘MICHAEL Gove has been warned by a Tory MP that the Union could end through "benign neglect" as voters in England give up on it just as they did with the EU.
The Cabinet Office minister was told by Jackie Doyle-Price that her constituents in Thurrock in Essex now griped about Scotland they way they used to about Brussels.
She said for many people in England the Union was not a “living entity”and urged UK ministers to do more to help people understand and appreciate it.’
The main problem is it is no longer a Union as such but a Federal UK excluding England.
Give England its own Parliament or at least English regional assemblies and the problem would be resolved
no it wouldn't - a UK government would only be allowed to work if the constituent nations accepted the federal government and allowed the federal government to control the overall economic direction of the nation, its defence etc- the English government let alone others would have no incentive to do this - a federal UK could only work if you broke England into pieces so no part was too powerful, and why should England want that?
The UK government already does control the overall economic direction and defence of the whole UK. Just England is the only country in the UK which does not have its own Parliament to run the rest of its domestic policy.
There is no reason an English Parliament would not work other than leftwingers don't want it as it would normally have a Tory majority, otherwise we should at least have regional assemblies which would still be better than the current situation where England has no government of its own at national or regional level outside of the UK (except in the London region with the Mayor and Assembly)
this is nuts - if there were an English government it would be like the SNP on steroids - questioning every single action of the UK govt and attempting to delegitimise it, be allowed to 'approve' its decisions etc - the UK is not suited to be a federation as England dominates - everybody who has thought about this for more than 10 minutes understands this.
I remmeber a particularly interesting and illuminating discussion on PB about 2012-13 which came to an almost unanimous conclusion (quite unusual for that time and general topic of indyref) that true federalism was a non-runner in the UK because of precisely what you say, plus the political unacceptability of breaking up England a la Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.
This is one reason why Gordon Brown's repeated Interventions with promises of more federalism have not, er, had much effect.
England doesn't need to be broken up within a Federal system, and the more it is broken up within that system, the more it dominates, as the 'more Englands' there are, the more they can out-vote the other home nations. Indeed, if England is broken up in a way that is commensurate with its population size, it totally swamps the other home nations, and defeats the entire object of federalisation. It becomes Westminster MPs mark 2.
I've made this argument to you a few times, and you've never made a counter-argument, so I'm surprised that you persist in the nonsense that England would need to be broken up to make a federal system work.
Hmm, that actually assumes a homogeneous England. If it is, then you are quite right. But if not, not.
You do realise you're undermining the SNP's whole argument on the hopelessness of Scotland's position wrt Westminster by saying that? English MP's aren't 'homogenous' either. Yet it's portrayed as Scotland being overruled by England.
That's because there is a majoritarian phenomenon in England under FPTP at Westminster, ie the Tories usually winning being part of it. PR would put a very different perspective on the entire matter.
But given that each English Parliament would have a ruling party (and presumably most would be Tory at the moment), that effect would surely be magnified?
The whole point of a federal structure is surely that in some circumstances, England counts as 'just a nation' among nations, and is not granted more influence by virtue of its large population - it 'takes one for the team'. I am comfortable with that. The desire to break England into cantons runs wholly counter to that aim. Scotland and Wales would in effect be 'other Yorkshires' - something which many would strongly object to.
That's the issue - either England accepts that the other nations have a veto (in effect) which would upset a lot of its voters ('why should we count for no more than the Nirish?', they might say). Or it doesn't, and therefore either overrides the other nations by population share, or by being broken up into cantons.
Succinctly put. I can't see any solution bar a unitary state or dissolution, and I can't see any takers for the former.
BREAKING: Switzerland cancels ratification of framework agreement with EU. "Based on the results of negotiations in recent months, the [Swiss] Federal Council has determined that the talks with the EU ... haven't led to the necessary solutions," said Swiss President Guy Parmelin.
Not really, our deal has better flexibility that EFTA membership and we have completely escaped ECJ jurisdiction which EFTA membership would still have, though to a lesser degree than EEA membership.
Hang on: if we were just party to the EFTA part (i.e. trade with Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein), then we'd be bound to follow the decisions of the EFTA Court, but the ECJ wouldn't have a say would it? It'd only be if we wanted to be a part of EFTA/EEA that would be an issue. And given we (like Switzerland) have our own separate side deal with the EU, that probably wouldn't be an issue.
If some think that the EU is the same as the EEA, the CU, EFTA etc then of course we would be bound by the ECJ. Just as having left and become a 3rd country we are definitely not bound by the WTO no siree.
I don't understand the point you are making. If we are members of EFTA but not of the EEA then we are neither bound by the ECJ or the EFTA court - the latter is specifically set up to adjudicate on EFTA decisions related to the EEA and has no jurisdiction to deal with more general EFTA matters which are outside the EEA.
And of course we are party to WTO rules as long as we are a member.
My point was sarcasm. Some people insist we would always have been slaves of the feared ECJ had we not become a 3rd country, and that we can just ignore WTO rules now having done so.
This is a misunderstanding. No-one sensible has ever said that a country can't or shouldn't choose to bind itself to rules within the international order. But in many cases when in the EU you don't have a choice, lots of choices normally belonging to a state are made by this elaborate trade association possessing increasing state like trappings.
Most Brexit supporters do want to be in the WTO, but all Brexit supporters want it to be a UK decision.
If we left the EU but remained in the EEA via EFTA it would not have been the EU making any decisions, it would be EFTA. It is a failing of logic and frankly intelligence when the two get conflated as being the same.
Mr. Leon, Sturgeon being an idiot is no reason to destroy a nation.
Devolution is a disaster. Especially the botched, stupid, asymmetric devolution given us by Labour. Boris is right
Anecdote: at my last large family gathering I was struck by the family members who were seriously anti-union and anti-Scottish. They used to be apathetic, now they are averse. Let Scotland go. Cut them away. This is a growing feeling in England. It will be England that ends the Union, if it ends
My family is not alone
‘MICHAEL Gove has been warned by a Tory MP that the Union could end through "benign neglect" as voters in England give up on it just as they did with the EU.
The Cabinet Office minister was told by Jackie Doyle-Price that her constituents in Thurrock in Essex now griped about Scotland they way they used to about Brussels.
She said for many people in England the Union was not a “living entity”and urged UK ministers to do more to help people understand and appreciate it.’
The main problem is it is no longer a Union as such but a Federal UK excluding England.
Give England its own Parliament or at least English regional assemblies and the problem would be resolved
no it wouldn't - a UK government would only be allowed to work if the constituent nations accepted the federal government and allowed the federal government to control the overall economic direction of the nation, its defence etc- the English government let alone others would have no incentive to do this - a federal UK could only work if you broke England into pieces so no part was too powerful, and why should England want that?
The UK government already does control the overall economic direction and defence of the whole UK. Just England is the only country in the UK which does not have its own Parliament to run the rest of its domestic policy.
There is no reason an English Parliament would not work other than leftwingers don't want it as it would normally have a Tory majority, otherwise we should at least have regional assemblies which would still be better than the current situation where England has no government of its own at national or regional level outside of the UK (except in the London region with the Mayor and Assembly)
this is nuts - if there were an English government it would be like the SNP on steroids - questioning every single action of the UK govt and attempting to delegitimise it, be allowed to 'approve' its decisions etc - the UK is not suited to be a federation as England dominates - everybody who has thought about this for more than 10 minutes understands this.
I remmeber a particularly interesting and illuminating discussion on PB about 2012-13 which came to an almost unanimous conclusion (quite unusual for that time and general topic of indyref) that true federalism was a non-runner in the UK because of precisely what you say, plus the political unacceptability of breaking up England a la Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.
This is one reason why Gordon Brown's repeated Interventions with promises of more federalism have not, er, had much effect.
England doesn't need to be broken up within a Federal system, and the more it is broken up within that system, the more it dominates, as the 'more Englands' there are, the more they can out-vote the other home nations. Indeed, if England is broken up in a way that is commensurate with its population size, it totally swamps the other home nations, and defeats the entire object of federalisation. It becomes Westminster MPs mark 2.
I've made this argument to you a few times, and you've never made a counter-argument, so I'm surprised that you persist in the nonsense that England would need to be broken up to make a federal system work.
Hmm, that actually assumes a homogeneous England. If it is, then you are quite right. But if not, not.
You do realise you're undermining the SNP's whole argument on the hopelessness of Scotland's position wrt Westminster by saying that? English MP's aren't 'homogenous' either. Yet it's portrayed as Scotland being overruled by England.
That's because there is a majoritarian phenomenon in England under FPTP at Westminster, ie the Tories usually winning being part of it. PR would put a very different perspective on the entire matter.
But given that each English Parliament would have a ruling party (and presumably most would be Tory at the moment), that effect would surely be magnified?
The whole point of a federal structure is surely that in some circumstances, England counts as 'just a nation' among nations, and is not granted more influence by virtue of its large population - it 'takes one for the team'. I am comfortable with that. The desire to break England into cantons runs wholly counter to that aim. Scotland and Wales would in effect be 'other Yorkshires' - something which many would strongly object to.
That's the issue - either England accepts that the other nations have a veto (in effect) which would upset a lot of its voters ('why should we count for no more than the Nirish?', they might say). Or it doesn't, and therefore either overrides the other nations by population share, or by being broken up into cantons.
Succinctly put. I can't see any solution bar a unitary state or dissolution, and I can't see any takers for the former.
Pretty much what we concluded in 2012-3 here. I did rather elide my earlier comments as I didn't believe for a moment that equal status was much fo a goer, but Luckyguy has made some good points/queries anyway.
We’ve all wondered why they didn’t close the borders. Now we know. It was The Woke. Closing borders is ‘racist’
This is pretty explosive stuff now
That was always the most obvious thing about the whole saga.
The interesting thing is that hardly anyone accuses New Zealand and Australia of being racist when they closed their borders.
It is the single biggest government failure. Perhaps in modern British history. Keeping the borders open surely killed tens of thousands and took 5% off GDP
We need to know exactly how much ‘fear of racism’ contributed to this and then the whole culture that perpetuates this toxic drivel needs to be extirpated
As I asked on a previous thread, What exactly do you mean by "closing the borders"? We are a major travel hub - do you mean that UK citizens abroad shouldn't have been allowed to return home, people with close family abroad not allowed to visit (either way) even in end of life scenarios, business travel reasons cancelled, journalists and news organisations not allowed to travel, HGV drivers not able to ply their trade?
This is not easy, practically, economically and on principle.
The government has massively cut international travel throughout all of this. And when you look at the traffic light rules now they are pretty draconian aren't they? Even visiting a green list country means a PCR test before leaving the UK plus a test within 72 hours of return to the UK plus a further PCR test two days after return - plus compulsory mask-wearing on route. Amber means all that plus a 4th PCR test 8 days after return plus quarantine. Red means all that plus quarantine in a government prescribed hotel (at traveller's expense).
I mean exactly that. Just close the fucking borders. To everyone, bar absolutely essential trade (and make HGV drivers stay in a bubble).
Australia did it, and it works. East Asia did it, and they are major travel hubs. Yes it is hurtful and painful; dying is worse
I'm sorry Leon but that's ridiculous. Australia has behaved abominably to its own citizens. Seems they have been more authoritarian than even we have.
I have a daughter in Australia, and a daughter in the UK. The former is now much freer than the latter, the former lives in an economy which is virtually unharmed, the latter lives in the UK
That said, I don't agree with the insane over-reactions now going on in Oz. And they have been rubbish at vaccines
Yep. One of my best mates lives in Sydney. Over the past week he has posted pictures of his vacation in Tasmania, including visits to plenty of restaurants and bars, his daughters packed indoor 21st birthday party, and massive crowds at sporting events. Apart from the travel bans, they are living more normally than us, and have been largely throughout.
“Apart from the travel bans”.
This is the problem though. The population think there’s no point in vaccines because it can be controlled easily enough the way it has been so far. There is fairly widespread support for just keeping the border closed forever. Friends of mine in their mid 30s there have now got jabbed, by simply wandering in to vaccine centres with no appointment and finding bored nurses with nothing to do. With just 3 million first doses given.
Singapore has a similar tale to tell. 30% of at-risk citizens declining the vaccine. And a government that has no inclination to do anything about it and happy just to keep the borders closed.
I'm not sure those numbers are correct* - they certainly don't match the numbers from Bloomberg or the NYTimes.
Also, the EU has told AZ they don't want any more shipments post June, so I'd be very surprised if a lawsuit actually happened.
* They may have been correct in the past, but I don't think they're correct now.
They're on the CDC website - take your pick.
As to the EU suing ANZ:
EU seeking €10 per day per missing dose from #AstraZeneca for its failure to meet delivery schedule, as of 1 July. Plus €10 million for each breach of contract.
AstraZeneca is expected to be 200 million doses short by the end of June.
We’ve all wondered why they didn’t close the borders. Now we know. It was The Woke. Closing borders is ‘racist’
This is pretty explosive stuff now
That was always the most obvious thing about the whole saga.
The interesting thing is that hardly anyone accuses New Zealand and Australia of being racist when they closed their borders.
It is the single biggest government failure. Perhaps in modern British history. Keeping the borders open surely killed tens of thousands and took 5% off GDP
We need to know exactly how much ‘fear of racism’ contributed to this and then the whole culture that perpetuates this toxic drivel needs to be extirpated
As I asked on a previous thread, What exactly do you mean by "closing the borders"? We are a major travel hub - do you mean that UK citizens abroad shouldn't have been allowed to return home, people with close family abroad not allowed to visit (either way) even in end of life scenarios, business travel reasons cancelled, journalists and news organisations not allowed to travel, HGV drivers not able to ply their trade?
This is not easy, practically, economically and on principle.
The government has massively cut international travel throughout all of this. And when you look at the traffic light rules now they are pretty draconian aren't they? Even visiting a green list country means a PCR test before leaving the UK plus a test within 72 hours of return to the UK plus a further PCR test two days after return - plus compulsory mask-wearing on route. Amber means all that plus a 4th PCR test 8 days after return plus quarantine. Red means all that plus quarantine in a government prescribed hotel (at traveller's expense).
I mean exactly that. Just close the fucking borders. To everyone, bar absolutely essential trade (and make HGV drivers stay in a bubble).
Australia did it, and it works. East Asia did it, and they are major travel hubs. Yes it is hurtful and painful; dying is worse
I'm sorry Leon but that's ridiculous. Australia has behaved abominably to its own citizens. Seems they have been more authoritarian than even we have.
I have a daughter in Australia, and a daughter in the UK. The former is now much freer than the latter, the former lives in an economy which is virtually unharmed, the latter lives in the UK
That said, I don't agree with the insane over-reactions now going on in Oz. And they have been rubbish at vaccines
Yep. One of my best mates lives in Sydney. Over the past week he has posted pictures of his vacation in Tasmania, including visits to plenty of restaurants and bars, his daughters packed indoor 21st birthday party, and massive crowds at sporting events. Apart from the travel bans, they are living more normally than us, and have been largely throughout.
Of course. My Aussie family sends me the same depressing photos (depressing for a European)
Most Brits would take Australia's Closed Borders Strategy. Add in our vaccine drive, and Korea's test and trace, and there, you have the right response to the pandemic
It means some Brits would end up stuck in India or America or wherever. Sorry. That's tough, but it's better than 200,000 dead
Except we've discussed this already.
Australians can travel to Australia. They just have hotel quarantine upon arrival in Australia.
Hence the fact that there are multiple flights a day to Australia from the US.
Hospitalisations. That's the key. Do we have the number?
The hospital patient total is 954 as of Monday. There's nothing to suggest that it's about to start skyrocketing again. Steady as she goes.
We've got another week or so to go until we see if the VOCs are having a serious effect. Bolton figures showing a rise in admissions and ITU.
But we already know that the variant isn't spreading like wildfire as per the Kent Plague, and that most of the new hospital admissions are amongst the unvaccinated.
The jabs are working. We are not going back to January.
Frankly it doesn't much matter if the number of Covid patients doubles or triples in a few isolated hotspots. If the hospitals begin to struggle then you simply chuck the excess sufferers into the backs of a flotilla of ambulances and distribute them amongst the numerous hospitals that have less than 5 remaining Covid cases left to treat. Job done.
Absolutely. It is a testament to the vaccine. It's unlikely to have a serious impact - but we shouldn;t fully count the chickens for another week or so.
I understand where you're coming from, but the problem here is that, moving forward, there are going to be new variants and nasty little clusters of cases cropping up for a long, long time to come. And we can't be having a wetting episode each time this happens, or else Covid panic will keep cycling round and round on television and in the stupid newspapers, and we'll never be able to get on with our lives.
Unless or until a significant degree of vaccine escape occurs - and, as time passes, it looks increasingly likely that the virus has driven itself into an evolutionary cul-de-sac, and we are therefore fairly safe from this - then it's important that these episodes aren't magnified out of all proportion. Localised surge testing (and, until the whole program is completed, surge vaccination) seem an entirely sufficient and proportionate response.
Mr. Leon, Sturgeon being an idiot is no reason to destroy a nation.
Devolution is a disaster. Especially the botched, stupid, asymmetric devolution given us by Labour. Boris is right
Anecdote: at my last large family gathering I was struck by the family members who were seriously anti-union and anti-Scottish. They used to be apathetic, now they are averse. Let Scotland go. Cut them away. This is a growing feeling in England. It will be England that ends the Union, if it ends
My family is not alone
‘MICHAEL Gove has been warned by a Tory MP that the Union could end through "benign neglect" as voters in England give up on it just as they did with the EU.
The Cabinet Office minister was told by Jackie Doyle-Price that her constituents in Thurrock in Essex now griped about Scotland they way they used to about Brussels.
She said for many people in England the Union was not a “living entity”and urged UK ministers to do more to help people understand and appreciate it.’
The main problem is it is no longer a Union as such but a Federal UK excluding England.
Give England its own Parliament or at least English regional assemblies and the problem would be resolved
no it wouldn't - a UK government would only be allowed to work if the constituent nations accepted the federal government and allowed the federal government to control the overall economic direction of the nation, its defence etc- the English government let alone others would have no incentive to do this - a federal UK could only work if you broke England into pieces so no part was too powerful, and why should England want that?
The UK government already does control the overall economic direction and defence of the whole UK. Just England is the only country in the UK which does not have its own Parliament to run the rest of its domestic policy.
There is no reason an English Parliament would not work other than leftwingers don't want it as it would normally have a Tory majority, otherwise we should at least have regional assemblies which would still be better than the current situation where England has no government of its own at national or regional level outside of the UK (except in the London region with the Mayor and Assembly)
this is nuts - if there were an English government it would be like the SNP on steroids - questioning every single action of the UK govt and attempting to delegitimise it, be allowed to 'approve' its decisions etc - the UK is not suited to be a federation as England dominates - everybody who has thought about this for more than 10 minutes understands this.
I remmeber a particularly interesting and illuminating discussion on PB about 2012-13 which came to an almost unanimous conclusion (quite unusual for that time and general topic of indyref) that true federalism was a non-runner in the UK because of precisely what you say, plus the political unacceptability of breaking up England a la Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.
This is one reason why Gordon Brown's repeated Interventions with promises of more federalism have not, er, had much effect.
England doesn't need to be broken up within a Federal system, and the more it is broken up within that system, the more it dominates, as the 'more Englands' there are, the more they can out-vote the other home nations. Indeed, if England is broken up in a way that is commensurate with its population size, it totally swamps the other home nations, and defeats the entire object of federalisation. It becomes Westminster MPs mark 2.
I've made this argument to you a few times, and you've never made a counter-argument, so I'm surprised that you persist in the nonsense that England would need to be broken up to make a federal system work.
Hmm, that actually assumes a homogeneous England. If it is, then you are quite right. But if not, not.
You do realise you're undermining the SNP's whole argument on the hopelessness of Scotland's position wrt Westminster by saying that? English MP's aren't 'homogenous' either. Yet it's portrayed as Scotland being overruled by England.
That's because there is a majoritarian phenomenon in England under FPTP at Westminster, ie the Tories usually winning being part of it. PR would put a very different perspective on the entire matter.
But given that each English Parliament would have a ruling party (and presumably most would be Tory at the moment), that effect would surely be magnified?
The whole point of a federal structure is surely that in some circumstances, England counts as 'just a nation' among nations, and is not granted more influence by virtue of its large population - it 'takes one for the team'. I am comfortable with that. The desire to break England into cantons runs wholly counter to that aim. Scotland and Wales would in effect be 'other Yorkshires' - something which many would strongly object to.
That's the issue - either England accepts that the other nations have a veto (in effect) which would upset a lot of its voters ('why should we count for no more than the Nirish?', they might say). Or it doesn't, and therefore either overrides the other nations by population share, or by being broken up into cantons.
Well yes, that is the issue that got the likes of our Phillip so exercised when I proposed a 'Council of the Isles' to ratify major foreign policy and defence decisions. However, I see no real loss - I suspect it would result in less 'Iraqs' and less expensive defence white elephants. In that sense I see it being very popular with actual English people.
Cummings says 99% of civil service jobs should be open to outsiders. Why on earth did he not focus on this rather than all of his other obsessions?
Just change the HR rules to let external people apply by default and sit back and relax in the knowledge you have profoundly transformed Whitehall for all time.
Mr. Leon, Sturgeon being an idiot is no reason to destroy a nation.
Devolution is a disaster. Especially the botched, stupid, asymmetric devolution given us by Labour. Boris is right
Anecdote: at my last large family gathering I was struck by the family members who were seriously anti-union and anti-Scottish. They used to be apathetic, now they are averse. Let Scotland go. Cut them away. This is a growing feeling in England. It will be England that ends the Union, if it ends
My family is not alone
‘MICHAEL Gove has been warned by a Tory MP that the Union could end through "benign neglect" as voters in England give up on it just as they did with the EU.
The Cabinet Office minister was told by Jackie Doyle-Price that her constituents in Thurrock in Essex now griped about Scotland they way they used to about Brussels.
She said for many people in England the Union was not a “living entity”and urged UK ministers to do more to help people understand and appreciate it.’
The main problem is it is no longer a Union as such but a Federal UK excluding England.
Give England its own Parliament or at least English regional assemblies and the problem would be resolved
no it wouldn't - a UK government would only be allowed to work if the constituent nations accepted the federal government and allowed the federal government to control the overall economic direction of the nation, its defence etc- the English government let alone others would have no incentive to do this - a federal UK could only work if you broke England into pieces so no part was too powerful, and why should England want that?
The UK government already does control the overall economic direction and defence of the whole UK. Just England is the only country in the UK which does not have its own Parliament to run the rest of its domestic policy.
There is no reason an English Parliament would not work other than leftwingers don't want it as it would normally have a Tory majority, otherwise we should at least have regional assemblies which would still be better than the current situation where England has no government of its own at national or regional level outside of the UK (except in the London region with the Mayor and Assembly)
this is nuts - if there were an English government it would be like the SNP on steroids - questioning every single action of the UK govt and attempting to delegitimise it, be allowed to 'approve' its decisions etc - the UK is not suited to be a federation as England dominates - everybody who has thought about this for more than 10 minutes understands this.
I remmeber a particularly interesting and illuminating discussion on PB about 2012-13 which came to an almost unanimous conclusion (quite unusual for that time and general topic of indyref) that true federalism was a non-runner in the UK because of precisely what you say, plus the political unacceptability of breaking up England a la Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.
This is one reason why Gordon Brown's repeated Interventions with promises of more federalism have not, er, had much effect.
England doesn't need to be broken up within a Federal system, and the more it is broken up within that system, the more it dominates, as the 'more Englands' there are, the more they can out-vote the other home nations. Indeed, if England is broken up in a way that is commensurate with its population size, it totally swamps the other home nations, and defeats the entire object of federalisation. It becomes Westminster MPs mark 2.
I've made this argument to you a few times, and you've never made a counter-argument, so I'm surprised that you persist in the nonsense that England would need to be broken up to make a federal system work.
Hmm, that actually assumes a homogeneous England. If it is, then you are quite right. But if not, not.
You do realise you're undermining the SNP's whole argument on the hopelessness of Scotland's position wrt Westminster by saying that? English MP's aren't 'homogenous' either. Yet it's portrayed as Scotland being overruled by England.
That's because there is a majoritarian phenomenon in England under FPTP at Westminster, ie the Tories usually winning being part of it. PR would put a very different perspective on the entire matter.
But given that each English Parliament would have a ruling party (and presumably most would be Tory at the moment), that effect would surely be magnified?
The whole point of a federal structure is surely that in some circumstances, England counts as 'just a nation' among nations, and is not granted more influence by virtue of its large population - it 'takes one for the team'. I am comfortable with that. The desire to break England into cantons runs wholly counter to that aim. Scotland and Wales would in effect be 'other Yorkshires' - something which many would strongly object to.
That's the issue - either England accepts that the other nations have a veto (in effect) which would upset a lot of its voters ('why should we count for no more than the Nirish?', they might say). Or it doesn't, and therefore either overrides the other nations by population share, or by being broken up into cantons.
Why should it accept that? For starters on occasion in the past the other home nations have overridden what England wanted anyway, eg 1950, 1964, February 1974 when England voted Tory but got a UK Labour government. If Starmer becomes PM in 2024 it will almost certainly happen again thanks to SNP MPs propping him up.
Plus in no other Federal nations do individual states get a veto on defence or Federal tax policy, that is what you elect the Federal governments to manage. However individual states do determine most of their domestic policy anyway, as Scotland, Wales and NI now do and as England would with its own Parliament
Dom's tales of the Mayor of Jaws do not match the cowardly way the Government have kept us in this lockdown months past the point deaths were eliminated.
We’ve all wondered why they didn’t close the borders. Now we know. It was The Woke. Closing borders is ‘racist’
This is pretty explosive stuff now
That was always the most obvious thing about the whole saga.
The interesting thing is that hardly anyone accuses New Zealand and Australia of being racist when they closed their borders.
It is the single biggest government failure. Perhaps in modern British history. Keeping the borders open surely killed tens of thousands and took 5% off GDP
We need to know exactly how much ‘fear of racism’ contributed to this and then the whole culture that perpetuates this toxic drivel needs to be extirpated
As I asked on a previous thread, What exactly do you mean by "closing the borders"? We are a major travel hub - do you mean that UK citizens abroad shouldn't have been allowed to return home, people with close family abroad not allowed to visit (either way) even in end of life scenarios, business travel reasons cancelled, journalists and news organisations not allowed to travel, HGV drivers not able to ply their trade?
This is not easy, practically, economically and on principle.
The government has massively cut international travel throughout all of this. And when you look at the traffic light rules now they are pretty draconian aren't they? Even visiting a green list country means a PCR test before leaving the UK plus a test within 72 hours of return to the UK plus a further PCR test two days after return - plus compulsory mask-wearing on route. Amber means all that plus a 4th PCR test 8 days after return plus quarantine. Red means all that plus quarantine in a government prescribed hotel (at traveller's expense).
I mean exactly that. Just close the fucking borders. To everyone, bar absolutely essential trade (and make HGV drivers stay in a bubble).
Australia did it, and it works. East Asia did it, and they are major travel hubs. Yes it is hurtful and painful; dying is worse
I'm sorry Leon but that's ridiculous. Australia has behaved abominably to its own citizens. Seems they have been more authoritarian than even we have.
I have a daughter in Australia, and a daughter in the UK. The former is now much freer than the latter, the former lives in an economy which is virtually unharmed, the latter lives in the UK
That said, I don't agree with the insane over-reactions now going on in Oz. And they have been rubbish at vaccines
Yep. One of my best mates lives in Sydney. Over the past week he has posted pictures of his vacation in Tasmania, including visits to plenty of restaurants and bars, his daughters packed indoor 21st birthday party, and massive crowds at sporting events. Apart from the travel bans, they are living more normally than us, and have been largely throughout.
Of course. My Aussie family sends me the same depressing photos (depressing for a European)
Most Brits would take Australia's Closed Borders Strategy. Add in our vaccine drive, and Korea's test and trace, and there, you have the right response to the pandemic
It means some Brits would end up stuck in India or America or wherever. Sorry. That's tough, but it's better than 200,000 dead
Except we've discussed this already.
Australians can travel to Australia. They just have hotel quarantine upon arrival in Australia.
Hence the fact that there are multiple flights a day to Australia from the US.
“Just have hotel quarantine”.
Robert this is a major impediment to travel and effectively a complete block if you have children.
I'm not sure those numbers are correct* - they certainly don't match the numbers from Bloomberg or the NYTimes.
Also, the EU has told AZ they don't want any more shipments post June, so I'd be very surprised if a lawsuit actually happened.
* They may have been correct in the past, but I don't think they're correct now.
They're on the CDC website - take your pick.
As to the EU suing ANZ:
EU seeking €10 per day per missing dose from #AstraZeneca for its failure to meet delivery schedule, as of 1 July. Plus €10 million for each breach of contract.
AstraZeneca is expected to be 200 million doses short by the end of June.
Yes, but they're not actually going to sue. Because there is no case.
This is all political posturing by the EU, to distract from their failings. And now that they've finally gotten their vaccination drive working, it will be quietly dropped.
Ultimately, there is no case. The contracts are clear, and there is no guarantee and there is certainly no "penalty payment".
This is like when a celebrity says they're going to sue someone for libel. It's a way of changing the conversation away from the EU's failings.
In general, I'd reckon the ratio between "I'm going to sue you" and "People actually getting sued" is probably about 10:1.
The unwelcome move by France to tighten travel restrictions is a direct consequence of the failure of the UK to put India on the red list immediately following the emergence of the terrible and urgent health crisis unfolding in India” – Brittany Ferries.
We’ve all wondered why they didn’t close the borders. Now we know. It was The Woke. Closing borders is ‘racist’
This is pretty explosive stuff now
That was always the most obvious thing about the whole saga.
The interesting thing is that hardly anyone accuses New Zealand and Australia of being racist when they closed their borders.
It is the single biggest government failure. Perhaps in modern British history. Keeping the borders open surely killed tens of thousands and took 5% off GDP
We need to know exactly how much ‘fear of racism’ contributed to this and then the whole culture that perpetuates this toxic drivel needs to be extirpated
As I asked on a previous thread, What exactly do you mean by "closing the borders"? We are a major travel hub - do you mean that UK citizens abroad shouldn't have been allowed to return home, people with close family abroad not allowed to visit (either way) even in end of life scenarios, business travel reasons cancelled, journalists and news organisations not allowed to travel, HGV drivers not able to ply their trade?
This is not easy, practically, economically and on principle.
The government has massively cut international travel throughout all of this. And when you look at the traffic light rules now they are pretty draconian aren't they? Even visiting a green list country means a PCR test before leaving the UK plus a test within 72 hours of return to the UK plus a further PCR test two days after return - plus compulsory mask-wearing on route. Amber means all that plus a 4th PCR test 8 days after return plus quarantine. Red means all that plus quarantine in a government prescribed hotel (at traveller's expense).
I mean exactly that. Just close the fucking borders. To everyone, bar absolutely essential trade (and make HGV drivers stay in a bubble).
Australia did it, and it works. East Asia did it, and they are major travel hubs. Yes it is hurtful and painful; dying is worse
I'm sorry Leon but that's ridiculous. Australia has behaved abominably to its own citizens. Seems they have been more authoritarian than even we have.
Once you’re in Australia, it’s been party central bar a few brief local lockdowns.
The problem has been getting there in the first place. The limited hotel capacity they have available, means that only a few hundred people can arrive in each city every day, so the airlines have been given maximum numbers of people per plane in the double digits. The airlines can’t work with mostly empty planes, so are only selling business and first tickets. So if you’re in the UAE (as a random example), it is going to cost you AUS$10k for flight and quarantine. The flights are all still ‘sold out’ though.
Maybe they could have built a massive tent city on an airfield somewhere, to allow more people in, but the basic issue is that millions of Aussies don’t live there.
We’ve all wondered why they didn’t close the borders. Now we know. It was The Woke. Closing borders is ‘racist’
This is pretty explosive stuff now
That was always the most obvious thing about the whole saga.
The interesting thing is that hardly anyone accuses New Zealand and Australia of being racist when they closed their borders.
It is the single biggest government failure. Perhaps in modern British history. Keeping the borders open surely killed tens of thousands and took 5% off GDP
We need to know exactly how much ‘fear of racism’ contributed to this and then the whole culture that perpetuates this toxic drivel needs to be extirpated
As I asked on a previous thread, What exactly do you mean by "closing the borders"? We are a major travel hub - do you mean that UK citizens abroad shouldn't have been allowed to return home, people with close family abroad not allowed to visit (either way) even in end of life scenarios, business travel reasons cancelled, journalists and news organisations not allowed to travel, HGV drivers not able to ply their trade?
This is not easy, practically, economically and on principle.
The government has massively cut international travel throughout all of this. And when you look at the traffic light rules now they are pretty draconian aren't they? Even visiting a green list country means a PCR test before leaving the UK plus a test within 72 hours of return to the UK plus a further PCR test two days after return - plus compulsory mask-wearing on route. Amber means all that plus a 4th PCR test 8 days after return plus quarantine. Red means all that plus quarantine in a government prescribed hotel (at traveller's expense).
I mean exactly that. Just close the fucking borders. To everyone, bar absolutely essential trade (and make HGV drivers stay in a bubble).
Australia did it, and it works. East Asia did it, and they are major travel hubs. Yes it is hurtful and painful; dying is worse
I'm sorry Leon but that's ridiculous. Australia has behaved abominably to its own citizens. Seems they have been more authoritarian than even we have.
I have a daughter in Australia, and a daughter in the UK. The former is now much freer than the latter, the former lives in an economy which is virtually unharmed, the latter lives in the UK
That said, I don't agree with the insane over-reactions now going on in Oz. And they have been rubbish at vaccines
Yep. One of my best mates lives in Sydney. Over the past week he has posted pictures of his vacation in Tasmania, including visits to plenty of restaurants and bars, his daughters packed indoor 21st birthday party, and massive crowds at sporting events. Apart from the travel bans, they are living more normally than us, and have been largely throughout.
“Apart from the travel bans”.
This is the problem though. The population think there’s no point in vaccines because it can be controlled easily enough the way it has been so far. There is fairly widespread support for just keeping the border closed forever. Friends of mine in their mid 30s there have now got jabbed, by simply wandering in to vaccine centres with no appointment and finding bored nurses with nothing to do. With just 3 million first doses given.
Singapore has a similar tale to tell. 30% of at-risk citizens declining the vaccine. And a government that has no inclination to do anything about it and happy just to keep the borders closed.
Yeah it sure is. Taiwan is another with huge vaccine hesitancy. But what level would ours have been if the rollout hadn't coincided with huge cases and lockdown? Not too different I reckon.
Looking through today's stats, quite a few places look likely to see a sudden surge in rates: Oldham, Rochdale, Manchester, South Ribble, Birmingham, Charnwood, Blaby ... Hopefully not on the scale of Bolton, but we'll see,
BREAKING: Switzerland cancels ratification of framework agreement with EU. "Based on the results of negotiations in recent months, the [Swiss] Federal Council has determined that the talks with the EU ... haven't led to the necessary solutions," said Swiss President Guy Parmelin.
Not really, our deal has better flexibility that EFTA membership and we have completely escaped ECJ jurisdiction which EFTA membership would still have, though to a lesser degree than EEA membership.
Hang on: if we were just party to the EFTA part (i.e. trade with Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein), then we'd be bound to follow the decisions of the EFTA Court, but the ECJ wouldn't have a say would it? It'd only be if we wanted to be a part of EFTA/EEA that would be an issue. And given we (like Switzerland) have our own separate side deal with the EU, that probably wouldn't be an issue.
If some think that the EU is the same as the EEA, the CU, EFTA etc then of course we would be bound by the ECJ. Just as having left and become a 3rd country we are definitely not bound by the WTO no siree.
I don't understand the point you are making. If we are members of EFTA but not of the EEA then we are neither bound by the ECJ or the EFTA court - the latter is specifically set up to adjudicate on EFTA decisions related to the EEA and has no jurisdiction to deal with more general EFTA matters which are outside the EEA.
And of course we are party to WTO rules as long as we are a member.
My point was sarcasm. Some people insist we would always have been slaves of the feared ECJ had we not become a 3rd country, and that we can just ignore WTO rules now having done so.
This is a misunderstanding. No-one sensible has ever said that a country can't or shouldn't choose to bind itself to rules within the international order. But in many cases when in the EU you don't have a choice, lots of choices normally belonging to a state are made by this elaborate trade association possessing increasing state like trappings.
Most Brexit supporters do want to be in the WTO, but all Brexit supporters want it to be a UK decision.
If we left the EU but remained in the EEA via EFTA it would not have been the EU making any decisions, it would be EFTA. It is a failing of logic and frankly intelligence when the two get conflated as being the same.
A point I have been trying to make to both sides of the argument for more than a decade. EFTA (if they would have us which I accept is by no means certain) really doesn't have any downsides as far as I am concerned.
Mr. Leon, Sturgeon being an idiot is no reason to destroy a nation.
Devolution is a disaster. Especially the botched, stupid, asymmetric devolution given us by Labour. Boris is right
Anecdote: at my last large family gathering I was struck by the family members who were seriously anti-union and anti-Scottish. They used to be apathetic, now they are averse. Let Scotland go. Cut them away. This is a growing feeling in England. It will be England that ends the Union, if it ends
My family is not alone
‘MICHAEL Gove has been warned by a Tory MP that the Union could end through "benign neglect" as voters in England give up on it just as they did with the EU.
The Cabinet Office minister was told by Jackie Doyle-Price that her constituents in Thurrock in Essex now griped about Scotland they way they used to about Brussels.
She said for many people in England the Union was not a “living entity”and urged UK ministers to do more to help people understand and appreciate it.’
The main problem is it is no longer a Union as such but a Federal UK excluding England.
Give England its own Parliament or at least English regional assemblies and the problem would be resolved
no it wouldn't - a UK government would only be allowed to work if the constituent nations accepted the federal government and allowed the federal government to control the overall economic direction of the nation, its defence etc- the English government let alone others would have no incentive to do this - a federal UK could only work if you broke England into pieces so no part was too powerful, and why should England want that?
The UK government already does control the overall economic direction and defence of the whole UK. Just England is the only country in the UK which does not have its own Parliament to run the rest of its domestic policy.
There is no reason an English Parliament would not work other than leftwingers don't want it as it would normally have a Tory majority, otherwise we should at least have regional assemblies which would still be better than the current situation where England has no government of its own at national or regional level outside of the UK (except in the London region with the Mayor and Assembly)
this is nuts - if there were an English government it would be like the SNP on steroids - questioning every single action of the UK govt and attempting to delegitimise it, be allowed to 'approve' its decisions etc - the UK is not suited to be a federation as England dominates - everybody who has thought about this for more than 10 minutes understands this.
I remmeber a particularly interesting and illuminating discussion on PB about 2012-13 which came to an almost unanimous conclusion (quite unusual for that time and general topic of indyref) that true federalism was a non-runner in the UK because of precisely what you say, plus the political unacceptability of breaking up England a la Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.
This is one reason why Gordon Brown's repeated Interventions with promises of more federalism have not, er, had much effect.
England doesn't need to be broken up within a Federal system, and the more it is broken up within that system, the more it dominates, as the 'more Englands' there are, the more they can out-vote the other home nations. Indeed, if England is broken up in a way that is commensurate with its population size, it totally swamps the other home nations, and defeats the entire object of federalisation. It becomes Westminster MPs mark 2.
I've made this argument to you a few times, and you've never made a counter-argument, so I'm surprised that you persist in the nonsense that England would need to be broken up to make a federal system work.
Hmm, that actually assumes a homogeneous England. If it is, then you are quite right. But if not, not.
You do realise you're undermining the SNP's whole argument on the hopelessness of Scotland's position wrt Westminster by saying that? English MP's aren't 'homogenous' either. Yet it's portrayed as Scotland being overruled by England.
That's because there is a majoritarian phenomenon in England under FPTP at Westminster, ie the Tories usually winning being part of it. PR would put a very different perspective on the entire matter.
But given that each English Parliament would have a ruling party (and presumably most would be Tory at the moment), that effect would surely be magnified?
The whole point of a federal structure is surely that in some circumstances, England counts as 'just a nation' among nations, and is not granted more influence by virtue of its large population - it 'takes one for the team'. I am comfortable with that. The desire to break England into cantons runs wholly counter to that aim. Scotland and Wales would in effect be 'other Yorkshires' - something which many would strongly object to.
That's the issue - either England accepts that the other nations have a veto (in effect) which would upset a lot of its voters ('why should we count for no more than the Nirish?', they might say). Or it doesn't, and therefore either overrides the other nations by population share, or by being broken up into cantons.
Succinctly put. I can't see any solution bar a unitary state or dissolution, and I can't see any takers for the former.
Except many won't acknowledge, let alone face up to, the consequences of the latter
We’ve all wondered why they didn’t close the borders. Now we know. It was The Woke. Closing borders is ‘racist’
This is pretty explosive stuff now
That was always the most obvious thing about the whole saga.
The interesting thing is that hardly anyone accuses New Zealand and Australia of being racist when they closed their borders.
It is the single biggest government failure. Perhaps in modern British history. Keeping the borders open surely killed tens of thousands and took 5% off GDP
We need to know exactly how much ‘fear of racism’ contributed to this and then the whole culture that perpetuates this toxic drivel needs to be extirpated
As I asked on a previous thread, What exactly do you mean by "closing the borders"? We are a major travel hub - do you mean that UK citizens abroad shouldn't have been allowed to return home, people with close family abroad not allowed to visit (either way) even in end of life scenarios, business travel reasons cancelled, journalists and news organisations not allowed to travel, HGV drivers not able to ply their trade?
This is not easy, practically, economically and on principle.
The government has massively cut international travel throughout all of this. And when you look at the traffic light rules now they are pretty draconian aren't they? Even visiting a green list country means a PCR test before leaving the UK plus a test within 72 hours of return to the UK plus a further PCR test two days after return - plus compulsory mask-wearing on route. Amber means all that plus a 4th PCR test 8 days after return plus quarantine. Red means all that plus quarantine in a government prescribed hotel (at traveller's expense).
I mean exactly that. Just close the fucking borders. To everyone, bar absolutely essential trade (and make HGV drivers stay in a bubble).
Australia did it, and it works. East Asia did it, and they are major travel hubs. Yes it is hurtful and painful; dying is worse
I'm sorry Leon but that's ridiculous. Australia has behaved abominably to its own citizens. Seems they have been more authoritarian than even we have.
I have a daughter in Australia, and a daughter in the UK. The former is now much freer than the latter, the former lives in an economy which is virtually unharmed, the latter lives in the UK
That said, I don't agree with the insane over-reactions now going on in Oz. And they have been rubbish at vaccines
Yep. One of my best mates lives in Sydney. Over the past week he has posted pictures of his vacation in Tasmania, including visits to plenty of restaurants and bars, his daughters packed indoor 21st birthday party, and massive crowds at sporting events. Apart from the travel bans, they are living more normally than us, and have been largely throughout.
“Apart from the travel bans”.
This is the problem though. The population think there’s no point in vaccines because it can be controlled easily enough the way it has been so far. There is fairly widespread support for just keeping the border closed forever. Friends of mine in their mid 30s there have now got jabbed, by simply wandering in to vaccine centres with no appointment and finding bored nurses with nothing to do. With just 3 million first doses given.
Singapore has a similar tale to tell. 30% of at-risk citizens declining the vaccine. And a government that has no inclination to do anything about it and happy just to keep the borders closed.
Yeah it sure is. Taiwan is another with huge vaccine hesitancy. But what level would ours have been if the rollout hadn't coincided with huge cases and lockdown? Not too different I reckon.
I'm not sure those numbers are correct* - they certainly don't match the numbers from Bloomberg or the NYTimes.
Also, the EU has told AZ they don't want any more shipments post June, so I'd be very surprised if a lawsuit actually happened.
* They may have been correct in the past, but I don't think they're correct now.
They're on the CDC website - take your pick.
As to the EU suing ANZ:
EU seeking €10 per day per missing dose from #AstraZeneca for its failure to meet delivery schedule, as of 1 July. Plus €10 million for each breach of contract.
AstraZeneca is expected to be 200 million doses short by the end of June.
Cummings says 99% of civil service jobs should be open to outsiders. Why on earth did he not focus on this rather than all of his other obsessions?
Just change the HR rules to let external people apply by default and sit back and relax in the knowledge you have profoundly transformed Whitehall for all time.
I thought that, to some degree anyway, Thatcher had done that.
It's either that they are not, in fact, advertised, or that (perish the thought) no-one applies.
Dom's tales of the Mayor of Jaws do not match the cowardly way the Government have kept us in this lockdown months past the point deaths were eliminated.
I think it matches very well with the apparent mindset and chaos of last year. And have you never heard of overcompensation?
I plotted a graph of cases by specimen date against hospitalisations one week later to see if there was a vaccine effect on the ratio. Unsurprisingly it was much higher during the peak (presumably due to missing a large number of cases); however, more interestingly it seems to have been in roughly the same place in mid-May as it was at the end of December (hospitalisations at roughly 5% of cases a week before).
This seems a bit odd in the context of vaccinations breaking the link between cases and hospitalisations.
I suppose one explanation might be that vaccinated people simply aren't catching Covid in any large numbers so the impact of vaccinations is seen in case numbers rather than hospitalisations.
We’ve all wondered why they didn’t close the borders. Now we know. It was The Woke. Closing borders is ‘racist’
This is pretty explosive stuff now
That was always the most obvious thing about the whole saga.
The interesting thing is that hardly anyone accuses New Zealand and Australia of being racist when they closed their borders.
It is the single biggest government failure. Perhaps in modern British history. Keeping the borders open surely killed tens of thousands and took 5% off GDP
We need to know exactly how much ‘fear of racism’ contributed to this and then the whole culture that perpetuates this toxic drivel needs to be extirpated
As I asked on a previous thread, What exactly do you mean by "closing the borders"? We are a major travel hub - do you mean that UK citizens abroad shouldn't have been allowed to return home, people with close family abroad not allowed to visit (either way) even in end of life scenarios, business travel reasons cancelled, journalists and news organisations not allowed to travel, HGV drivers not able to ply their trade?
This is not easy, practically, economically and on principle.
The government has massively cut international travel throughout all of this. And when you look at the traffic light rules now they are pretty draconian aren't they? Even visiting a green list country means a PCR test before leaving the UK plus a test within 72 hours of return to the UK plus a further PCR test two days after return - plus compulsory mask-wearing on route. Amber means all that plus a 4th PCR test 8 days after return plus quarantine. Red means all that plus quarantine in a government prescribed hotel (at traveller's expense).
I mean exactly that. Just close the fucking borders. To everyone, bar absolutely essential trade (and make HGV drivers stay in a bubble).
Australia did it, and it works. East Asia did it, and they are major travel hubs. Yes it is hurtful and painful; dying is worse
I'm sorry Leon but that's ridiculous. Australia has behaved abominably to its own citizens. Seems they have been more authoritarian than even we have.
I have a daughter in Australia, and a daughter in the UK. The former is now much freer than the latter, the former lives in an economy which is virtually unharmed, the latter lives in the UK
That said, I don't agree with the insane over-reactions now going on in Oz. And they have been rubbish at vaccines
Yep. One of my best mates lives in Sydney. Over the past week he has posted pictures of his vacation in Tasmania, including visits to plenty of restaurants and bars, his daughters packed indoor 21st birthday party, and massive crowds at sporting events. Apart from the travel bans, they are living more normally than us, and have been largely throughout.
Of course. My Aussie family sends me the same depressing photos (depressing for a European)
Most Brits would take Australia's Closed Borders Strategy. Add in our vaccine drive, and Korea's test and trace, and there, you have the right response to the pandemic
It means some Brits would end up stuck in India or America or wherever. Sorry. That's tough, but it's better than 200,000 dead
Except we've discussed this already.
Australians can travel to Australia. They just have hotel quarantine upon arrival in Australia.
Hence the fact that there are multiple flights a day to Australia from the US.
“Just have hotel quarantine”.
Robert this is a major impediment to travel and effectively a complete block if you have children.
I'm not sure those numbers are correct* - they certainly don't match the numbers from Bloomberg or the NYTimes.
Also, the EU has told AZ they don't want any more shipments post June, so I'd be very surprised if a lawsuit actually happened.
* They may have been correct in the past, but I don't think they're correct now.
They're on the CDC website - take your pick.
As to the EU suing ANZ:
EU seeking €10 per day per missing dose from #AstraZeneca for its failure to meet delivery schedule, as of 1 July. Plus €10 million for each breach of contract.
AstraZeneca is expected to be 200 million doses short by the end of June.
I'm not sure those numbers are correct* - they certainly don't match the numbers from Bloomberg or the NYTimes.
Also, the EU has told AZ they don't want any more shipments post June, so I'd be very surprised if a lawsuit actually happened.
* They may have been correct in the past, but I don't think they're correct now.
They're on the CDC website - take your pick.
As to the EU suing ANZ:
EU seeking €10 per day per missing dose from #AstraZeneca for its failure to meet delivery schedule, as of 1 July. Plus €10 million for each breach of contract.
AstraZeneca is expected to be 200 million doses short by the end of June.
So what does that come to? €100billion give or take?
Does it matter?
There are 2 things worth noting here - I don't remember any clauses with such penalties in the published contract and it screams don't do business with the EU...
Evidence in which the account says that some people can't do anything right and others can't do anything wrong is, in normal circumstances, incomplete with regard to accuracy. This tendency discredits the entire operation except where evidence is both significant and corroborated.
I don't think there is anything here to harm Boris and friends right now. Though obvs there is stuff which can be used to add weight once his wheels come off. That isn't yet.
We’ve all wondered why they didn’t close the borders. Now we know. It was The Woke. Closing borders is ‘racist’
This is pretty explosive stuff now
That was always the most obvious thing about the whole saga.
The interesting thing is that hardly anyone accuses New Zealand and Australia of being racist when they closed their borders.
It is the single biggest government failure. Perhaps in modern British history. Keeping the borders open surely killed tens of thousands and took 5% off GDP
We need to know exactly how much ‘fear of racism’ contributed to this and then the whole culture that perpetuates this toxic drivel needs to be extirpated
As I asked on a previous thread, What exactly do you mean by "closing the borders"? We are a major travel hub - do you mean that UK citizens abroad shouldn't have been allowed to return home, people with close family abroad not allowed to visit (either way) even in end of life scenarios, business travel reasons cancelled, journalists and news organisations not allowed to travel, HGV drivers not able to ply their trade?
This is not easy, practically, economically and on principle.
The government has massively cut international travel throughout all of this. And when you look at the traffic light rules now they are pretty draconian aren't they? Even visiting a green list country means a PCR test before leaving the UK plus a test within 72 hours of return to the UK plus a further PCR test two days after return - plus compulsory mask-wearing on route. Amber means all that plus a 4th PCR test 8 days after return plus quarantine. Red means all that plus quarantine in a government prescribed hotel (at traveller's expense).
I mean exactly that. Just close the fucking borders. To everyone, bar absolutely essential trade (and make HGV drivers stay in a bubble).
Australia did it, and it works. East Asia did it, and they are major travel hubs. Yes it is hurtful and painful; dying is worse
I'm sorry Leon but that's ridiculous. Australia has behaved abominably to its own citizens. Seems they have been more authoritarian than even we have.
I have a daughter in Australia, and a daughter in the UK. The former is now much freer than the latter, the former lives in an economy which is virtually unharmed, the latter lives in the UK
That said, I don't agree with the insane over-reactions now going on in Oz. And they have been rubbish at vaccines
Yep. One of my best mates lives in Sydney. Over the past week he has posted pictures of his vacation in Tasmania, including visits to plenty of restaurants and bars, his daughters packed indoor 21st birthday party, and massive crowds at sporting events. Apart from the travel bans, they are living more normally than us, and have been largely throughout.
“Apart from the travel bans”.
This is the problem though. The population think there’s no point in vaccines because it can be controlled easily enough the way it has been so far. There is fairly widespread support for just keeping the border closed forever. Friends of mine in their mid 30s there have now got jabbed, by simply wandering in to vaccine centres with no appointment and finding bored nurses with nothing to do. With just 3 million first doses given.
Singapore has a similar tale to tell. 30% of at-risk citizens declining the vaccine. And a government that has no inclination to do anything about it and happy just to keep the borders closed.
Yeah it sure is. Taiwan is another with huge vaccine hesitancy. But what level would ours have been if the rollout hadn't coincided with huge cases and lockdown? Not too different I reckon.
I disagree.
If we'd never had a significant outbreak, nor a national lockdown nor serious restrictions of any kind?
I'm not sure those numbers are correct* - they certainly don't match the numbers from Bloomberg or the NYTimes.
Also, the EU has told AZ they don't want any more shipments post June, so I'd be very surprised if a lawsuit actually happened.
* They may have been correct in the past, but I don't think they're correct now.
They're on the CDC website - take your pick.
As to the EU suing ANZ:
EU seeking €10 per day per missing dose from #AstraZeneca for its failure to meet delivery schedule, as of 1 July. Plus €10 million for each breach of contract.
AstraZeneca is expected to be 200 million doses short by the end of June.
A lawyer for the European Union asked a Brussels court on Wednesday to impose a large fine on AstraZeneca (AZN.L) for its delays in delivering COVID-19 vaccines to the EU.
BREAKING: Switzerland cancels ratification of framework agreement with EU. "Based on the results of negotiations in recent months, the [Swiss] Federal Council has determined that the talks with the EU ... haven't led to the necessary solutions," said Swiss President Guy Parmelin.
Not really, our deal has better flexibility that EFTA membership and we have completely escaped ECJ jurisdiction which EFTA membership would still have, though to a lesser degree than EEA membership.
Hang on: if we were just party to the EFTA part (i.e. trade with Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein), then we'd be bound to follow the decisions of the EFTA Court, but the ECJ wouldn't have a say would it? It'd only be if we wanted to be a part of EFTA/EEA that would be an issue. And given we (like Switzerland) have our own separate side deal with the EU, that probably wouldn't be an issue.
If some think that the EU is the same as the EEA, the CU, EFTA etc then of course we would be bound by the ECJ. Just as having left and become a 3rd country we are definitely not bound by the WTO no siree.
I don't understand the point you are making. If we are members of EFTA but not of the EEA then we are neither bound by the ECJ or the EFTA court - the latter is specifically set up to adjudicate on EFTA decisions related to the EEA and has no jurisdiction to deal with more general EFTA matters which are outside the EEA.
And of course we are party to WTO rules as long as we are a member.
My point was sarcasm. Some people insist we would always have been slaves of the feared ECJ had we not become a 3rd country, and that we can just ignore WTO rules now having done so.
This is a misunderstanding. No-one sensible has ever said that a country can't or shouldn't choose to bind itself to rules within the international order. But in many cases when in the EU you don't have a choice, lots of choices normally belonging to a state are made by this elaborate trade association possessing increasing state like trappings.
Most Brexit supporters do want to be in the WTO, but all Brexit supporters want it to be a UK decision.
If we left the EU but remained in the EEA via EFTA it would not have been the EU making any decisions, it would be EFTA. It is a failing of logic and frankly intelligence when the two get conflated as being the same.
A point I have been trying to make to both sides of the argument for more than a decade. EFTA (if they would have us which I accept is by no means certain) really doesn't have any downsides as far as I am concerned.
I (regretfully at the time, regretted massively now that it has turned into a clusterfuck) voted to leave the EU as we were increasingly incompatible with its political integration strategy. Stepping off in our own time in preference to being removed in their own time. What we have gone foaming-at-the-mouth crazy with is our drive to cut all trade links with the EU.
There is still a way out of this. Rejoin EFTA. Marketing it as a bulwark against EU bullying or whatever. Just get up able to import and export again.
I'm not sure those numbers are correct* - they certainly don't match the numbers from Bloomberg or the NYTimes.
Also, the EU has told AZ they don't want any more shipments post June, so I'd be very surprised if a lawsuit actually happened.
* They may have been correct in the past, but I don't think they're correct now.
They're on the CDC website - take your pick.
As to the EU suing ANZ:
EU seeking €10 per day per missing dose from #AstraZeneca for its failure to meet delivery schedule, as of 1 July. Plus €10 million for each breach of contract.
AstraZeneca is expected to be 200 million doses short by the end of June.
A lawyer for the European Union asked a Brussels court on Wednesday to impose a large fine on AstraZeneca (AZN.L) for its delays in delivering COVID-19 vaccines to the EU.
According to Google Flights, you can fly today from LAX to Melbourne for $2,335. Although you will need to pay for hotel quarantine when you get to the other end.
Cummings says his decision to quit No 10 was linked to Carrie Symonds, the PM’s partner, trying to change various Downing Street appointments. In particular, he says she was trying to change the outcome of one official hiring process in a way that was “completely unethical”.
But he says his relationship with the PM had deteriorated. “Fundamentally I regarded him as unfit for the job,” says Cummings.
That’s actually the big one.
Symonds doesn’t have a job in No.10, but has previously worked for the party and knows everyone.
Presumably she doesn’t hold a security clearance, which would be an interesting line of questioning...
While experts & those following closely know the system failed & how much suffering was preventable, I think broader public want to move forward, forget Covid & see vaccines as the solution. Have to keep optimism about normal life ahead with sobriety over the mistakes made.
I'm not sure those numbers are correct* - they certainly don't match the numbers from Bloomberg or the NYTimes.
Also, the EU has told AZ they don't want any more shipments post June, so I'd be very surprised if a lawsuit actually happened.
* They may have been correct in the past, but I don't think they're correct now.
They're on the CDC website - take your pick.
As to the EU suing ANZ:
EU seeking €10 per day per missing dose from #AstraZeneca for its failure to meet delivery schedule, as of 1 July. Plus €10 million for each breach of contract.
AstraZeneca is expected to be 200 million doses short by the end of June.
A lawyer for the European Union asked a Brussels court on Wednesday to impose a large fine on AstraZeneca (AZN.L) for its delays in delivering COVID-19 vaccines to the EU.
I'm not sure those numbers are correct* - they certainly don't match the numbers from Bloomberg or the NYTimes.
Also, the EU has told AZ they don't want any more shipments post June, so I'd be very surprised if a lawsuit actually happened.
* They may have been correct in the past, but I don't think they're correct now.
They're on the CDC website - take your pick.
As to the EU suing ANZ:
EU seeking €10 per day per missing dose from #AstraZeneca for its failure to meet delivery schedule, as of 1 July. Plus €10 million for each breach of contract.
AstraZeneca is expected to be 200 million doses short by the end of June.
A lawyer for the European Union asked a Brussels court on Wednesday to impose a large fine on AstraZeneca (AZN.L) for its delays in delivering COVID-19 vaccines to the EU.
Cummings says 99% of civil service jobs should be open to outsiders. Why on earth did he not focus on this rather than all of his other obsessions?
Just change the HR rules to let external people apply by default and sit back and relax in the knowledge you have profoundly transformed Whitehall for all time.
I thought that, to some degree anyway, Thatcher had done that.
It's either that they are not, in fact, advertised, or that (perish the thought) no-one applies.
One of the things I strongly disagreed with about the Thatcher era was the way in which they changed rules in some parts of the public sector
In 1986 just after leaving Uni I had a summer job at the British Geological Survey. There was a lady there who was a renowned expert on a system of clay analysis known as X-Ray Goniometry - a vitally important technique for analysing clay minerals in North Sea cores - it was used as part of the process of checking oil companies were being honest in their declarations of reserves.
Anyway, a period of reform swept through many institutions and in the case of the BGS it basically meant that jobs were reclassified with a minimum education level. In the case of her position you had to have a PhD. Which she didn't have. So she had to reapply for her own job and didn't get it because she didn't have the necessary qualifications. Even though there was probably no-one in the country who knew more about the subject than she did.
According to Google Flights, you can fly today from LAX to Melbourne for $2,335. Although you will need to pay for hotel quarantine when you get to the other end.
It's no coincidence, there is a 15 second delay in broadcast so any state secrets, swearing etc can be muted. Handy for the BBC.
If that's true why wasn't the swearing censored?
I think public attitudes have changed to the point that factually reporting that someone allegedly said "fuck" is not regarded by most as offensive. We see it here too - the word pops up 20 times a day, whereas if you used it in the early days it'd probably have got you suspended.
One point on Hancock. Cummings said he suggested breaking up the Health departments roles and thinks it was a mistake not to do so.
This is something I said repeatedly at the time. It made no sense to have one cabinet minister responsible for maybe 4 or 5 of the most important 6 things in government at the time, whilst someone as senior as Gove had few responsibilities.
During the peak emergency period we should have had a Cab Sec for Health Procurement, another for Testing, another for Hospitals, another for Care Homes (or something similar).
I can believe Hancock was as incompetent as Cummings suggests, but I doubt anyone could have done his role properly in that period. The underlying mistake is overloading one manager rather than spreading the work and responsibility out to enough resource.
We’ve all wondered why they didn’t close the borders. Now we know. It was The Woke. Closing borders is ‘racist’
This is pretty explosive stuff now
That was always the most obvious thing about the whole saga.
The interesting thing is that hardly anyone accuses New Zealand and Australia of being racist when they closed their borders.
It is the single biggest government failure. Perhaps in modern British history. Keeping the borders open surely killed tens of thousands and took 5% off GDP
We need to know exactly how much ‘fear of racism’ contributed to this and then the whole culture that perpetuates this toxic drivel needs to be extirpated
As I asked on a previous thread, What exactly do you mean by "closing the borders"? We are a major travel hub - do you mean that UK citizens abroad shouldn't have been allowed to return home, people with close family abroad not allowed to visit (either way) even in end of life scenarios, business travel reasons cancelled, journalists and news organisations not allowed to travel, HGV drivers not able to ply their trade?
This is not easy, practically, economically and on principle.
The government has massively cut international travel throughout all of this. And when you look at the traffic light rules now they are pretty draconian aren't they? Even visiting a green list country means a PCR test before leaving the UK plus a test within 72 hours of return to the UK plus a further PCR test two days after return - plus compulsory mask-wearing on route. Amber means all that plus a 4th PCR test 8 days after return plus quarantine. Red means all that plus quarantine in a government prescribed hotel (at traveller's expense).
I mean exactly that. Just close the fucking borders. To everyone, bar absolutely essential trade (and make HGV drivers stay in a bubble).
Australia did it, and it works. East Asia did it, and they are major travel hubs. Yes it is hurtful and painful; dying is worse
I'm sorry Leon but that's ridiculous. Australia has behaved abominably to its own citizens. Seems they have been more authoritarian than even we have.
I have a daughter in Australia, and a daughter in the UK. The former is now much freer than the latter, the former lives in an economy which is virtually unharmed, the latter lives in the UK
That said, I don't agree with the insane over-reactions now going on in Oz. And they have been rubbish at vaccines
Yep. One of my best mates lives in Sydney. Over the past week he has posted pictures of his vacation in Tasmania, including visits to plenty of restaurants and bars, his daughters packed indoor 21st birthday party, and massive crowds at sporting events. Apart from the travel bans, they are living more normally than us, and have been largely throughout.
Of course. My Aussie family sends me the same depressing photos (depressing for a European)
Most Brits would take Australia's Closed Borders Strategy. Add in our vaccine drive, and Korea's test and trace, and there, you have the right response to the pandemic
It means some Brits would end up stuck in India or America or wherever. Sorry. That's tough, but it's better than 200,000 dead
Except we've discussed this already.
Australians can travel to Australia. They just have hotel quarantine upon arrival in Australia.
Hence the fact that there are multiple flights a day to Australia from the US.
“Just have hotel quarantine”.
Robert this is a major impediment to travel and effectively a complete block if you have children.
But that's exactly the same as China, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc (although those countries accept non citizens who go through the quarantine).
The goal is to stop any CV19 cases entering the country. And a proper quarantine regime is the best way to achieve it. Now two weeks in a shitty hotel room is pretty miserable. But it's not prison. And if you need to return to Australia it's perfectly achieveable.
Also: you can fly TOMORROW on Emirates from Dubai to Melbourne for $1,691.
That's not $10k.
Because very few citizens are being admitted:
You can travel to Australia if you are an Australian citizen, a permanent resident or a New Zealand citizen usually resident in Australia.
Australia has strict border measures in place to protect the health of the Australian community. Very limited flights are currently available to and from Australia and you may not be able to travel at this time.
Philip Collins @PhilipJCollins1 · 1h Boris Johnson is both a formidable electoral politician and fundamentally ill-equipped for high office. Lots of senior Tories knew what they were giving us.
According to Google Flights, you can fly today from LAX to Melbourne for $2,335. Although you will need to pay for hotel quarantine when you get to the other end.
steve richards @steverichards14 · 5h If voters are indifferent to D Cummings’ accounts of the chaos behind the scenes as Covid struck and subsequently ...they shouldn’t be.
Also: you can fly TOMORROW on Emirates from Dubai to Melbourne for $1,691.
That's not $10k.
Thing is, you can't cherry pick the strategy. When does Australia expect to open its borders? According to that Spiked article, not any time soon. It might be a case of the hare and the tortoise.
They have taken it slowly but for how much longer will the country be closed? Three months? Six months? A couple of years?
That's no way to run a country.
I'd take Boris' option any day of the week and trust me I can't f**king believe I am saying that.
That site has the reasons why you might be refused permission to return to Australia:
red response (with a cross), if you indicated that you: have COVID-19 like symptoms have been near a person with COVID-19 symptoms. have been in an location of interest in New Zealand have not acknowledged the need to have a negative COVID-19 test result to travel to Australia
And I believe they have a blanket ban on people who've been in India in the previous 14 days, but I don't see that on the site.
The unwelcome move by France to tighten travel restrictions is a direct consequence of the failure of the UK to put India on the red list immediately following the emergence of the terrible and urgent health crisis unfolding in India” – Brittany Ferries.
I would say it is a direct consequence of the U.K. being virtually the only country to do genome sequencing in any bulk. Although I wouldn’t be totally surprised to discover that there is collusion between the French and U.K. Govt’s given the U.K. official position that people should not travel to amber countries on holiday.
One point on Hancock. Cummings said he suggested breaking up the Health departments roles and thinks it was a mistake not to do so.
This is something I said repeatedly at the time. It made no sense to have one cabinet minister responsible for maybe 4 or 5 of the most important 6 things in government at the time, whilst someone as senior as Gove had few responsibilities.
During the peak emergency period we should have had a Cab Sec for Health Procurement, another for Testing, another for Hospitals, another for Care Homes (or something similar).
I can believe Hancock was as incompetent as Cummings suggests, but I doubt anyone could have done his role properly in that period. The underlying mistake is overloading one manager rather than spreading the work and responsibility out to enough resource.
Except one of the big plans going forward is to bring NHS England back into government as being directly managed by the Health Sec, whereas at moment it is arms length and Stevens has a lot more control.
Comments
Nothing seems to dent some of the public's love of Johnson and his clown act.
Most Brexit supporters do want to be in the WTO, but all Brexit supporters want it to be a UK decision.
Good for the balance of payments.
The jabs are working. We are not going back to January.
Frankly it doesn't much matter if the number of Covid patients doubles or triples in a few isolated hotspots. If the hospitals begin to struggle then you simply chuck the excess sufferers into the backs of a flotilla of ambulances and distribute them amongst the numerous hospitals that have less than 5 remaining Covid cases left to treat. Job done.
The Mail will go to town on that.
But I suspect there's a bigger reason. Dom is 4 moves ahead don't forget.
@DPJHodges
·
7m
I'm not sure the idea Rishi is Dom's man is necessarily going to help Rishi moving forward.
The whole point of a federal structure is surely that in some circumstances, England counts as 'just a nation' among nations, and is not granted more influence by virtue of its large population - it 'takes one for the team'. I am comfortable with that. The desire to break England into cantons runs wholly counter to that aim. Scotland and Wales would in effect be 'other Yorkshires' - something which many would strongly object to.
Not quite Cruella De Vil (wrong gender for a start, also less well dressed) but the principle stands.
https://twitter.com/PhantomPower14/status/1397571885051883520?s=20
*not a sexual reference.
https://www.rte.ie/news/europe/2021/0526/1224063-switzerland-european-union/
Their mistake is in thinking that *they* would be that decent opposition.
Also, the EU has told AZ they don't want any more shipments post June, so I'd be very surprised if a lawsuit actually happened.
* They may have been correct in the past, but I don't think they're correct now.
I can't see any solution bar a unitary state or dissolution, and I can't see any takers for the former.
This is the problem though. The population think there’s no point in vaccines because it can be controlled easily enough the way it has been so far. There is fairly widespread support for just keeping the border closed forever. Friends of mine in their mid 30s there have now got jabbed, by simply wandering in to vaccine centres with no appointment and finding bored nurses with nothing to do. With just 3 million first doses given.
Singapore has a similar tale to tell. 30% of at-risk citizens declining the vaccine. And a government that has no inclination to do anything about it and happy just to keep the borders closed.
As to the EU suing ANZ:
EU seeking €10 per day per missing dose from #AstraZeneca for its failure to meet delivery schedule, as of 1 July. Plus €10 million for each breach of contract.
AstraZeneca is expected to be 200 million doses short by the end of June.
https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1397516727492222979?s=20
Australians can travel to Australia. They just have hotel quarantine upon arrival in Australia.
Hence the fact that there are multiple flights a day to Australia from the US.
Unless or until a significant degree of vaccine escape occurs - and, as time passes, it looks increasingly likely that the virus has driven itself into an evolutionary cul-de-sac, and we are therefore fairly safe from this - then it's important that these episodes aren't magnified out of all proportion. Localised surge testing (and, until the whole program is completed, surge vaccination) seem an entirely sufficient and proportionate response.
Why on earth did he not focus on this rather than all of his other obsessions?
Just change the HR rules to let external people apply by default and sit back and relax in the knowledge you have profoundly transformed Whitehall for all time.
Plus in no other Federal nations do individual states get a veto on defence or Federal tax policy, that is what you elect the Federal governments to manage. However individual states do determine most of their domestic policy anyway, as Scotland, Wales and NI now do and as England would with its own Parliament
Robert this is a major impediment to travel and effectively a complete block if you have children.
This is all political posturing by the EU, to distract from their failings. And now that they've finally gotten their vaccination drive working, it will be quietly dropped.
Ultimately, there is no case. The contracts are clear, and there is no guarantee and there is certainly no "penalty payment".
This is like when a celebrity says they're going to sue someone for libel. It's a way of changing the conversation away from the EU's failings.
In general, I'd reckon the ratio between "I'm going to sue you" and "People actually getting sued" is probably about 10:1.
The unwelcome move by France to tighten travel restrictions is a direct consequence of the failure of the UK to put India on the red list immediately following the emergence of the terrible and urgent health crisis unfolding in India” – Brittany Ferries.
https://twitter.com/SimonCalder/status/1397566685293461511?s=20
The problem has been getting there in the first place. The limited hotel capacity they have available, means that only a few hundred people can arrive in each city every day, so the airlines have been given maximum numbers of people per plane in the double digits. The airlines can’t work with mostly empty planes, so are only selling business and first tickets. So if you’re in the UAE (as a random example), it is going to cost you AUS$10k for flight and quarantine. The flights are all still ‘sold out’ though.
Maybe they could have built a massive tent city on an airfield somewhere, to allow more people in, but the basic issue is that millions of Aussies don’t live there.
But what level would ours have been if the rollout hadn't coincided with huge cases and lockdown? Not too different I reckon.
Shame they didn't value the vaccine that much when they ordered it.
The rise in cases continues. This is still in the less vaccinated age groups. Otherwise steady or falling
The rise in admissions continues. This is still in the less vaccinated age groups. Otherwise steady or falling
It's either that they are not, in fact, advertised, or that (perish the thought) no-one applies.
This seems a bit odd in the context of vaccinations breaking the link between cases and hospitalisations.
I suppose one explanation might be that vaccinated people simply aren't catching Covid in any large numbers so the impact of vaccinations is seen in case numbers rather than hospitalisations.
There are 2 things worth noting here - I don't remember any clauses with such penalties in the published contract and it screams don't do business with the EU...
I don't think there is anything here to harm Boris and friends right now. Though obvs there is stuff which can be used to add weight once his wheels come off. That isn't yet.
A lawyer for the European Union asked a Brussels court on Wednesday to impose a large fine on AstraZeneca (AZN.L) for its delays in delivering COVID-19 vaccines to the EU.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/eu-seeks-huge-fine-astrazeneca-vaccine-delays-2021-05-26/
Although what AZ PLC has got to do with a case against AZ AB is anyone's guess....
There is still a way out of this. Rejoin EFTA. Marketing it as a bulwark against EU bullying or whatever. Just get up able to import and export again.
A lawyer for the European Union asked a Brussels court on Wednesday to impose a large fine on AstraZeneca (AZN.L) for its delays in delivering COVID-19 vaccines to the EU.
And you will need to be Australian. Obviously.
That's not $10k.
Symonds doesn’t have a job in No.10, but has previously worked for the party and knows everyone.
Presumably she doesn’t hold a security clearance, which would be an interesting line of questioning...
While experts & those following closely know the system failed & how much suffering was preventable, I think broader public want to move forward, forget Covid & see vaccines as the solution. Have to keep optimism about normal life ahead with sobriety over the mistakes made.
https://twitter.com/devisridhar/status/1397582208676810753?s=20
The point is that this is a smokescreen to hide the EU's failings, not a serious attempt to extract money from AZ.
In 1986 just after leaving Uni I had a summer job at the British Geological Survey. There was a lady there who was a renowned expert on a system of clay analysis known as X-Ray Goniometry - a vitally important technique for analysing clay minerals in North Sea cores - it was used as part of the process of checking oil companies were being honest in their declarations of reserves.
Anyway, a period of reform swept through many institutions and in the case of the BGS it basically meant that jobs were reclassified with a minimum education level. In the case of her position you had to have a PhD. Which she didn't have. So she had to reapply for her own job and didn't get it because she didn't have the necessary qualifications. Even though there was probably no-one in the country who knew more about the subject than she did.
@benrileysmith
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4m
Within 24 hours we will have Matt Hancock's response to Cummings's claims.
Labour has called an urgent question for tomorrow, which Hancock is likley to respond to in Commons.
Hancock is also expected to do a Covid press conference tomorrow.
This is something I said repeatedly at the time. It made no sense to have one cabinet minister responsible for maybe 4 or 5 of the most important 6 things in government at the time, whilst someone as senior as Gove had few responsibilities.
During the peak emergency period we should have had a Cab Sec for Health Procurement, another for Testing, another for Hospitals, another for Care Homes (or something similar).
I can believe Hancock was as incompetent as Cummings suggests, but I doubt anyone could have done his role properly in that period. The underlying mistake is overloading one manager rather than spreading the work and responsibility out to enough resource.
The goal is to stop any CV19 cases entering the country. And a proper quarantine regime is the best way to achieve it. Now two weeks in a shitty hotel room is pretty miserable. But it's not prison. And if you need to return to Australia it's perfectly achieveable.
You can travel to Australia if you are an Australian citizen, a permanent resident or a New Zealand citizen usually resident in Australia.
Australia has strict border measures in place to protect the health of the Australian community. Very limited flights are currently available to and from Australia and you may not be able to travel at this time.
https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/australian-citizen-or-permanent-resident
@PhilipJCollins1
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1h
Boris Johnson is both a formidable electoral politician and fundamentally ill-equipped for high office. Lots of senior Tories knew what they were giving us.
It doesn't look too onerous.
@steverichards14
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5h
If voters are indifferent to D Cummings’ accounts of the chaos behind the scenes as Covid struck and subsequently ...they shouldn’t be.
A 'change the voters' view?
They have taken it slowly but for how much longer will the country be closed? Three months? Six months? A couple of years?
That's no way to run a country.
I'd take Boris' option any day of the week and trust me I can't f**king believe I am saying that.
That site has the reasons why you might be refused permission to return to Australia:
red response (with a cross), if you indicated that you:
have COVID-19 like symptoms
have been near a person with COVID-19 symptoms.
have been in an location of interest in New Zealand
have not acknowledged the need to have a negative COVID-19 test result to travel to Australia
And I believe they have a blanket ban on people who've been in India in the previous 14 days, but I don't see that on the site.