Rights and wrongs aside, it’s strange how much of the commentary about the protocol bypasses the reality that it is itself disruptive for Northern Ireland, given the strength of opposition, and stretches the GFA very thin indeed, as Rory Montgomery has noted.
I think Biden is basically ambivalent about EU-UK politics on NI and just wants something practical that works for both communities, and stabilises peace.
That being his position, it puts pressure on the EU to compromise in reality.
The Foreign Office has kindly chartered a train to take the media down to the G7 in Cornwall. With five hours for the media trapped together talking to and about itself, we’ve finally created a real life Twitter.
Mr. Seal, that's cases. I'd want to see the figures for cases with serious symptoms and deaths. Those matter more than the total number of cases.
I'd take 100% infection if 0% had serious symptoms.
and
are of interest.
Very useful. Taking the second graph and shifting it left by a week (and scaling vertically), it's reasonably close (albeit somewhat shallower on average, I think) and just getting to the point where the younger cases inflected and jumped upwards (31st of May). One week from now, we should have a good handle on how the admissions will go in following (to whatever degree) the cases. Very handwavy, and could be far too oversimplified (especially given the different populations of the age bands):
What is this phrase “handwavy” I have never heard anyone use it but you. What on Earth does it mean?
I've always seen it used before as designating a mathematical or logical step where the background is not rigorous or solid. That it's plausible and makes sense, but the evidence/data at this time can't be said to be remotely conclusive on it. I'm using it to emphasise that the data and evidence are weak, even if they make sense and are consistent.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Trans women (ie those born men) at least, have a very high chance of falling into a life of deprivation via sex work etc.
Normalising trans as having full and equal dignity in society is highly worthwhile.
When I saw that Keir was introducing self-ID for trans yesterday, my heart sank.
In what possible universe is this a good position to stake out during a key by-election.
The government is fighting a culture war, and winning.
Keir is an idiot. He must stand down immediately after Batley & Spen which is increasingly looking like a loss (I previously had it as a win).
So you're saying it could be the cis of death for poor old Kier?
One hopes.
As others pointed out, presciently, he is a dud. He is a dud now, and will remain a dud.
It’s not his fault, he’s in many ways great casting for a Labour leader. But he clearly lacks retail appeal; his strategy is unfathomable; his comms not up to much.
Get rid.
That's a bit unfair to him. He's managed to win over some new and very loyal fans during his time as leader.
With regards to the ongoing discussion on CRT. Apparently a US battalion commander is under investigation for comments including “If you are white, you are part of the problem”. It is, for those who know about these things, the 1-8 “fighting eagles infantry. His comments do not seem to be being met with unalloyed enthusiasm by this serving under him.
That quoted comment from the commander is, for want of a better word, racist.
Another case of 'they are exactly what they accuse you of'.
I've generally switched off from all this (by logging out of twitter) but some things you can't help notice, like the Yale psychiatrist who admitted to fantasies about shooting white people in a public university seminar. Maybe she should get together with the battalion commander cited above.
All normal. Just people getting on with their jobs. Nothing at all to see here. Or - if you are Philip Thompson - it is the rebirth of Western Civilisation!
There was a good piece in an Australian magazine the other day, which argues well the point that a lot of the problems in Western society are much more about class than race.
That was a large part of the recent derided government race enquiry, whose conclusions are being ignored.
I would agree that class is a bigger issue than race, but they do heavily interest.
At risk of doxxing myself as some sort of Bennite Corbanista, at least so far as education is concerned, class is a far bigger issue than race, and working class BAME communities have worse outcomes than middle class BAME communities, as do White working class communities.
That doesn’t have to be the case.
I am spending a morning next week with Katherine Birbalsingh to see the work she is doing at Michaela (my wife is a fan) so will be interesting… but she is getting very good results from a BAME working class group of kids
Katherine Birbalsingh is brilliant, I am a big fan as well. I particularly like her theory that all people are a bit racist. The sad reality is that we all probably make judgements about groups based on physical characteristics, even if it is only at a subconscious level.
Yes but we need another word for this very human phenomenon, it is not even ultimately about recent but about comfort with “like” versus “not-like”.
“Racism” conjures up the full spectrum of horrors from Ollie Robinson’s tweets right through to the ku klux klan on horseback, carrying torches.
Yes agreed - I thought Kahnemanns book 'thinking fast and slow' (a massive bestseller) explains it really well, we are just massively flawed creatures, this is how we have evolved to be through milleniums of evolution. This is why the certainty that the woke have on many subjects is so ridiculous.
And another example of journalists being more like political activists
And there is zero evidence that the conversation ever happened
The conversation being reported is evidence that it happened. If you mean there is no proof, you might be right although there could be a recording.
No. Journalists have made things up in the past. This is such a perfectly crafted anti-Tory/anti-Brexit nugget that I am sceptical of its origins
ICYMI, this is what we are talking about, from Politico's London Playbook and tweeted by Marina Hyde:-
Fighting talk: One Conservative Brexiteer said Biden should row in behind Britain and not the EU in the dispute to break the deadlock. “America should remember who their allies are,” the person told Playbook. Asked what Johnson should tell Biden, the MP added: “Unfortunately he’s so senile that he probably won’t remember what we tell him anyway. Unless an aide is listening I’m not sure he’s going to remember for very long.” Erm. Wow. https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/politico-london-playbook-bojo-meets-jobi-on-the-ground-at-the-g7-dom-vs-matt-round-2/
Yes. Unsourced, explosive, offensive and targeted at Tories and Brexiteers.
Really depends whether this is being said on the record by Lord Clarke or off the record by the assistant secretary of Bootle and Walton Conservative association during a game of darts. Not much to see.
However, on the bigger issue. The UK has, of course, been shafted, mostly under TMs watch, on the island of Ireland issue, to the extent that it is unsustainable, which means it was folly to go there.
If nothing else in comprehensible sadly the return to violence in the province will, if nothing is done, be unmistakeable. From a Unionist point of view (one with which I have almost no sympathy, being a supporter of a united Ireland) the deal is a clear step, without consent, away from the union. Sausagegate is required to make the truth clear and simple.
If one turned the tables and said that the right deal for no border within Ireland is one in which the whole of the British Isles is to be treated as a single unit, and the the de facto (no de iure) boundary is between the whole island of Ireland the the rest of the EU, the EU would not accept it for an instant.
That is what they are asking us to accept. Naturally we should not have done so, but we are where we are. The status quo is literally incendiary.
Consent was the big argument - stormont can reject it in 3.5 years
It doesn't appear the EU is factoring this into their calculations.....
I don't think they think there's a chance Stormont will reject it.
While the Unionist parties are against it, the Nationalist parties and Alliance are in favour. Without the Alliance party turning against it, there seems to be no possible path to a majority against consent.
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
Nearly 14C in the fog this morning; I've not seen that before - foggy mornings by the sea are normally cold
Here in the middle of the country the temperature didn't dip below 19 degrees last night. One of those nights you wish you'd been staying in a hotel with air conditioning.
We bought a small air conditioning unit last year. Invaluable for nights like that!
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
With regards to the ongoing discussion on CRT. Apparently a US battalion commander is under investigation for comments including “If you are white, you are part of the problem”. It is, for those who know about these things, the 1-8 “fighting eagles infantry. His comments do not seem to be being met with unalloyed enthusiasm by this serving under him.
That quoted comment from the commander is, for want of a better word, racist.
Another case of 'they are exactly what they accuse you of'.
I've generally switched off from all this (by logging out of twitter) but some things you can't help notice, like the Yale psychiatrist who admitted to fantasies about shooting white people in a public university seminar. Maybe she should get together with the battalion commander cited above.
All normal. Just people getting on with their jobs. Nothing at all to see here. Or - if you are Philip Thompson - it is the rebirth of Western Civilisation!
There was a good piece in an Australian magazine the other day, which argues well the point that a lot of the problems in Western society are much more about class than race.
That was a large part of the recent derided government race enquiry, whose conclusions are being ignored.
I would agree that class is a bigger issue than race, but they do heavily interest.
At risk of doxxing myself as some sort of Bennite Corbanista, at least so far as education is concerned, class is a far bigger issue than race, and working class BAME communities have worse outcomes than middle class BAME communities, as do White working class communities.
That doesn’t have to be the case.
I am spending a morning next week with Katherine Birbalsingh to see the work she is doing at Michaela (my wife is a fan) so will be interesting… but she is getting very good results from a BAME working class group of kids
Katherine Birbalsingh is brilliant, I am a big fan as well. I particularly like her theory that all people are a bit racist. The sad reality is that we all probably make judgements about groups based on physical characteristics, even if it is only at a subconscious level.
Yes but we need another word for this very human phenomenon, it is not even ultimately about recent but about comfort with “like” versus “not-like”.
“Racism” conjures up the full spectrum of horrors from Ollie Robinson’s tweets right through to the ku klux klan on horseback, carrying torches.
Yes agreed - I thought Kahnemanns book 'thinking fast and slow' (a massive bestseller) explains it really well, we are just massively flawed creatures, this is how we have evolved to be through milleniums of evolution. This is why the certainty that the woke have on many subjects is so ridiculous.
Difference comes in unlimited forms, and indeed what is “different” to me, might not be to you.
We can all get behind tolerance for “difference”. Indeed it is a core liberal belief.
In fact, in the vague, third-hand, christian values I was raised by my parents, I was always told to look beyond difference and that all people were worthy of respect and dignity.
Let’s get rid of woke and just...encourage tolerance and respect.
And another example of journalists being more like political activists
And there is zero evidence that the conversation ever happened
The conversation being reported is evidence that it happened. If you mean there is no proof, you might be right although there could be a recording.
No. Journalists have made things up in the past. This is such a perfectly crafted anti-Tory/anti-Brexit nugget that I am sceptical of its origins
ICYMI, this is what we are talking about, from Politico's London Playbook and tweeted by Marina Hyde:-
Fighting talk: One Conservative Brexiteer said Biden should row in behind Britain and not the EU in the dispute to break the deadlock. “America should remember who their allies are,” the person told Playbook. Asked what Johnson should tell Biden, the MP added: “Unfortunately he’s so senile that he probably won’t remember what we tell him anyway. Unless an aide is listening I’m not sure he’s going to remember for very long.” Erm. Wow. https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/politico-london-playbook-bojo-meets-jobi-on-the-ground-at-the-g7-dom-vs-matt-round-2/
Yes. Unsourced, explosive, offensive and targeted at Tories and Brexiteers.
Really depends whether this is being said on the record by Lord Clarke or off the record by the assistant secretary of Bootle and Walton Conservative association during a game of darts. Not much to see.
However, on the bigger issue. The UK has, of course, been shafted, mostly under TMs watch, on the island of Ireland issue, to the extent that it is unsustainable, which means it was folly to go there.
If nothing else in comprehensible sadly the return to violence in the province will, if nothing is done, be unmistakeable. From a Unionist point of view (one with which I have almost no sympathy, being a supporter of a united Ireland) the deal is a clear step, without consent, away from the union. Sausagegate is required to make the truth clear and simple.
If one turned the tables and said that the right deal for no border within Ireland is one in which the whole of the British Isles is to be treated as a single unit, and the the de facto (no de iure) boundary is between the whole island of Ireland the the rest of the EU, the EU would not accept it for an instant.
That is what they are asking us to accept. Naturally we should not have done so, but we are where we are. The status quo is literally incendiary.
Consent was the big argument - stormont can reject it in 3.5 years
It doesn't appear the EU is factoring this into their calculations.....
Or the EU can count.
It's safe to assume the nationalist parties will support the Protocol. It's conceivable that the Alliance would vote against it, but it's damn hard to imagine circumstances leading to that. There aren't enough Unionist MLAs to vote the Protocol down.
The Stormont Consent Process might look convincing, but it's only weakly connected to anything. Bozza was sold a pup, liable to create even more mess than Dilyn.
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
Hopefully they do a size: beergut Unisex is a bit non gender specific innit?
Strongly suspect that this is a cut and paste job from an American piece of merchandise. Stars and stripes at the top and "the flag" instead of "the queen". The last line is the giveaway. Will no doubt prove popular with those totally not racist booing fans who object to the BLM movement's position on the ownership of the means of production, or something.
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
The thing you don't get is that disastrous May had screwed the UK royally by agreeing to resolve the NI issue first.
Having done that, the Protocol and the Treaty we got was the best option on the table. It extricated the UK from the EU without a No Deal Brexit, it allowed GB to be completely free and left the UK in charge of implementing the Protocol.
That was then and this is now. Now that's been achieved, its on the UK to ensure the Protocol doesn't work as the EU wants it to. The Protocol was the EU's "prize" not something the UK ever wanted, it was a price we chose to pay to get the best option available - now we need to make it clear their prize was a dud. Barnier spent year buying an unworkable Protocol and it is not in the UK's interests anymore to make it work.
And another example of journalists being more like political activists
And there is zero evidence that the conversation ever happened
The conversation being reported is evidence that it happened. If you mean there is no proof, you might be right although there could be a recording.
No. Journalists have made things up in the past. This is such a perfectly crafted anti-Tory/anti-Brexit nugget that I am sceptical of its origins
ICYMI, this is what we are talking about, from Politico's London Playbook and tweeted by Marina Hyde:-
Fighting talk: One Conservative Brexiteer said Biden should row in behind Britain and not the EU in the dispute to break the deadlock. “America should remember who their allies are,” the person told Playbook. Asked what Johnson should tell Biden, the MP added: “Unfortunately he’s so senile that he probably won’t remember what we tell him anyway. Unless an aide is listening I’m not sure he’s going to remember for very long.” Erm. Wow. https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/politico-london-playbook-bojo-meets-jobi-on-the-ground-at-the-g7-dom-vs-matt-round-2/
Yes. Unsourced, explosive, offensive and targeted at Tories and Brexiteers.
Really depends whether this is being said on the record by Lord Clarke or off the record by the assistant secretary of Bootle and Walton Conservative association during a game of darts. Not much to see.
However, on the bigger issue. The UK has, of course, been shafted, mostly under TMs watch, on the island of Ireland issue, to the extent that it is unsustainable, which means it was folly to go there.
If nothing else in comprehensible sadly the return to violence in the province will, if nothing is done, be unmistakeable. From a Unionist point of view (one with which I have almost no sympathy, being a supporter of a united Ireland) the deal is a clear step, without consent, away from the union. Sausagegate is required to make the truth clear and simple.
If one turned the tables and said that the right deal for no border within Ireland is one in which the whole of the British Isles is to be treated as a single unit, and the the de facto (no de iure) boundary is between the whole island of Ireland the the rest of the EU, the EU would not accept it for an instant.
That is what they are asking us to accept. Naturally we should not have done so, but we are where we are. The status quo is literally incendiary.
Consent was the big argument - stormont can reject it in 3.5 years
It doesn't appear the EU is factoring this into their calculations.....
Or the EU can count.
It's safe to assume the nationalist parties will support the Protocol. It's conceivable that the Alliance would vote against it, but it's damn hard to imagine circumstances leading to that. There aren't enough Unionist MLAs to vote the Protocol down.
The Stormont Consent Process might look convincing, but it's only weakly connected to anything. Bozza was sold a pup, liable to create even more mess than Dilyn.
The consent process comes in in 3.5 years time. If consent (how to decide??) is not given the protocols end two years thereafter. To be replaced by?? So in January 2027 we face an interesting possibility.
The idea that a return to sectarian violence can be delayed for over 5 years seems optimistic.
Mr. Age, zealotry can be popular because you don't need to think and can instead spend your energy feeling righteous and hating people with a different skin colour/political perspective/religion.
It's a problem reasonable people face, being able to entertain ideas and see other perspectives without accepting them. Zealots just decry all heresy and heathens as immoral, to be coerced into obedience or reduced to nothing.
The former is necessary for nuance and democracy, the latter leads to absolutism and tyranny. And trying to stop someone going to university because she sang along to rap lyrics years ago. Or play cricket because he tweeted something a decade ago.
And another example of journalists being more like political activists
And there is zero evidence that the conversation ever happened
The conversation being reported is evidence that it happened. If you mean there is no proof, you might be right although there could be a recording.
No. Journalists have made things up in the past. This is such a perfectly crafted anti-Tory/anti-Brexit nugget that I am sceptical of its origins
ICYMI, this is what we are talking about, from Politico's London Playbook and tweeted by Marina Hyde:-
Fighting talk: One Conservative Brexiteer said Biden should row in behind Britain and not the EU in the dispute to break the deadlock. “America should remember who their allies are,” the person told Playbook. Asked what Johnson should tell Biden, the MP added: “Unfortunately he’s so senile that he probably won’t remember what we tell him anyway. Unless an aide is listening I’m not sure he’s going to remember for very long.” Erm. Wow. https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/politico-london-playbook-bojo-meets-jobi-on-the-ground-at-the-g7-dom-vs-matt-round-2/
Yes. Unsourced, explosive, offensive and targeted at Tories and Brexiteers.
Really depends whether this is being said on the record by Lord Clarke or off the record by the assistant secretary of Bootle and Walton Conservative association during a game of darts. Not much to see.
However, on the bigger issue. The UK has, of course, been shafted, mostly under TMs watch, on the island of Ireland issue, to the extent that it is unsustainable, which means it was folly to go there.
If nothing else in comprehensible sadly the return to violence in the province will, if nothing is done, be unmistakeable. From a Unionist point of view (one with which I have almost no sympathy, being a supporter of a united Ireland) the deal is a clear step, without consent, away from the union. Sausagegate is required to make the truth clear and simple.
If one turned the tables and said that the right deal for no border within Ireland is one in which the whole of the British Isles is to be treated as a single unit, and the the de facto (no de iure) boundary is between the whole island of Ireland the the rest of the EU, the EU would not accept it for an instant.
That is what they are asking us to accept. Naturally we should not have done so, but we are where we are. The status quo is literally incendiary.
Consent was the big argument - stormont can reject it in 3.5 years
It doesn't appear the EU is factoring this into their calculations.....
Or the EU can count.
It's safe to assume the nationalist parties will support the Protocol. It's conceivable that the Alliance would vote against it, but it's damn hard to imagine circumstances leading to that. There aren't enough Unionist MLAs to vote the Protocol down.
The Stormont Consent Process might look convincing, but it's only weakly connected to anything. Bozza was sold a pup, liable to create even more mess than Dilyn.
If Bozza rather than Barnier was the one sold a pup, why are the EU the hysterical ones crying and making threats because its not being implemented how they wanted it to be implemented?
With regards to the ongoing discussion on CRT. Apparently a US battalion commander is under investigation for comments including “If you are white, you are part of the problem”. It is, for those who know about these things, the 1-8 “fighting eagles infantry. His comments do not seem to be being met with unalloyed enthusiasm by this serving under him.
That quoted comment from the commander is, for want of a better word, racist.
Another case of 'they are exactly what they accuse you of'.
I've generally switched off from all this (by logging out of twitter) but some things you can't help notice, like the Yale psychiatrist who admitted to fantasies about shooting white people in a public university seminar. Maybe she should get together with the battalion commander cited above.
All normal. Just people getting on with their jobs. Nothing at all to see here. Or - if you are Philip Thompson - it is the rebirth of Western Civilisation!
There was a good piece in an Australian magazine the other day, which argues well the point that a lot of the problems in Western society are much more about class than race.
That was a large part of the recent derided government race enquiry, whose conclusions are being ignored.
I would agree that class is a bigger issue than race, but they do heavily interest.
At risk of doxxing myself as some sort of Bennite Corbanista, at least so far as education is concerned, class is a far bigger issue than race, and working class BAME communities have worse outcomes than middle class BAME communities, as do White working class communities.
That doesn’t have to be the case.
I am spending a morning next week with Katherine Birbalsingh to see the work she is doing at Michaela (my wife is a fan) so will be interesting… but she is getting very good results from a BAME working class group of kids
Katherine Birbalsingh is brilliant, I am a big fan as well. I particularly like her theory that all people are a bit racist. The sad reality is that we all probably make judgements about groups based on physical characteristics, even if it is only at a subconscious level.
Yes but we need another word for this very human phenomenon, it is not even ultimately about recent but about comfort with “like” versus “not-like”.
“Racism” conjures up the full spectrum of horrors from Ollie Robinson’s tweets right through to the ku klux klan on horseback, carrying torches.
Yes agreed - I thought Kahnemanns book 'thinking fast and slow' (a massive bestseller) explains it really well, we are just massively flawed creatures, this is how we have evolved to be through milleniums of evolution. This is why the certainty that the woke have on many subjects is so ridiculous.
That book should be required reading for everyone. I think it explains why the subconscious uses pattern recognition very heavily, and obviously that has an impact on how we view race and colour, and therefore how racism is a natural state for humans. I am not sure it gives any clues as to whether one should be woke or not though, it is more an inwards looking book.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Trans women (ie those born men) at least, have a very high chance of falling into a life of deprivation via sex work etc.
Normalising trans as having full and equal dignity in society is highly worthwhile.
Absolutely but to say they are one of the most discriminated against was unnecessary even if it is true.
With regards to the ongoing discussion on CRT. Apparently a US battalion commander is under investigation for comments including “If you are white, you are part of the problem”. It is, for those who know about these things, the 1-8 “fighting eagles infantry. His comments do not seem to be being met with unalloyed enthusiasm by this serving under him.
That quoted comment from the commander is, for want of a better word, racist.
Another case of 'they are exactly what they accuse you of'.
I've generally switched off from all this (by logging out of twitter) but some things you can't help notice, like the Yale psychiatrist who admitted to fantasies about shooting white people in a public university seminar. Maybe she should get together with the battalion commander cited above.
All normal. Just people getting on with their jobs. Nothing at all to see here. Or - if you are Philip Thompson - it is the rebirth of Western Civilisation!
There was a good piece in an Australian magazine the other day, which argues well the point that a lot of the problems in Western society are much more about class than race.
That was a large part of the recent derided government race enquiry, whose conclusions are being ignored.
I would agree that class is a bigger issue than race, but they do heavily interest.
At risk of doxxing myself as some sort of Bennite Corbanista, at least so far as education is concerned, class is a far bigger issue than race, and working class BAME communities have worse outcomes than middle class BAME communities, as do White working class communities.
That doesn’t have to be the case.
I am spending a morning next week with Katherine Birbalsingh to see the work she is doing at Michaela (my wife is a fan) so will be interesting… but she is getting very good results from a BAME working class group of kids
Katherine Birbalsingh is brilliant, I am a big fan as well. I particularly like her theory that all people are a bit racist. The sad reality is that we all probably make judgements about groups based on physical characteristics, even if it is only at a subconscious level.
Yes but we need another word for this very human phenomenon, it is not even ultimately about recent but about comfort with “like” versus “not-like”.
“Racism” conjures up the full spectrum of horrors from Ollie Robinson’s tweets right through to the ku klux klan on horseback, carrying torches.
Yes agreed - I thought Kahnemanns book 'thinking fast and slow' (a massive bestseller) explains it really well, we are just massively flawed creatures, this is how we have evolved to be through milleniums of evolution. This is why the certainty that the woke have on many subjects is so ridiculous.
Difference comes in unlimited forms, and indeed what is “different” to me, might not be to you.
We can all get behind tolerance for “difference”. Indeed it is a core liberal belief.
In fact, in the vague, third-hand, christian values I was raised by my parents, I was always told to look beyond difference and that all people were worthy of respect and dignity.
Let’s get rid of woke and just...encourage tolerance and respect.
Yes, I couldn't agree more. We could do with resucitating some other of these christian ideas, ie forgiveness, possibility of redemption etc.
Nearly 14C in the fog this morning; I've not seen that before - foggy mornings by the sea are normally cold
Here in the middle of the country the temperature didn't dip below 19 degrees last night. One of those nights you wish you'd been staying in a hotel with air conditioning.
One advantage of living by the sea is that it takes the edge off both very hot and very cold.
One disadvantage is that it normally cools down pretty quickly in the evening, so those warm mediterranean type evenings are even rarer here than they are inland.
With regards to the ongoing discussion on CRT. Apparently a US battalion commander is under investigation for comments including “If you are white, you are part of the problem”. It is, for those who know about these things, the 1-8 “fighting eagles infantry. His comments do not seem to be being met with unalloyed enthusiasm by this serving under him.
That quoted comment from the commander is, for want of a better word, racist.
Another case of 'they are exactly what they accuse you of'.
I've generally switched off from all this (by logging out of twitter) but some things you can't help notice, like the Yale psychiatrist who admitted to fantasies about shooting white people in a public university seminar. Maybe she should get together with the battalion commander cited above.
All normal. Just people getting on with their jobs. Nothing at all to see here. Or - if you are Philip Thompson - it is the rebirth of Western Civilisation!
There was a good piece in an Australian magazine the other day, which argues well the point that a lot of the problems in Western society are much more about class than race.
That was a large part of the recent derided government race enquiry, whose conclusions are being ignored.
I would agree that class is a bigger issue than race, but they do heavily interest.
At risk of doxxing myself as some sort of Bennite Corbanista, at least so far as education is concerned, class is a far bigger issue than race, and working class BAME communities have worse outcomes than middle class BAME communities, as do White working class communities.
That doesn’t have to be the case.
I am spending a morning next week with Katherine Birbalsingh to see the work she is doing at Michaela (my wife is a fan) so will be interesting… but she is getting very good results from a BAME working class group of kids
Katherine Birbalsingh is brilliant, I am a big fan as well. I particularly like her theory that all people are a bit racist. The sad reality is that we all probably make judgements about groups based on physical characteristics, even if it is only at a subconscious level.
Yes but we need another word for this very human phenomenon, it is not even ultimately about recent but about comfort with “like” versus “not-like”.
“Racism” conjures up the full spectrum of horrors from Ollie Robinson’s tweets right through to the ku klux klan on horseback, carrying torches.
Yes agreed - I thought Kahnemanns book 'thinking fast and slow' (a massive bestseller) explains it really well, we are just massively flawed creatures, this is how we have evolved to be through milleniums of evolution. This is why the certainty that the woke have on many subjects is so ridiculous.
That book should be required reading for everyone. I think it explains why the subconscious uses pattern recognition very heavily, and obviously that has an impact on how we view race and colour, and therefore how racism is a natural state for humans. I am not sure it gives any clues as to whether one should be woke or not though, it is more an inwards looking book.
I fear you are extrapolating wildly from anything Kahneman actually said. But even if something is natural, it does not make it desirable or even neutral, like death from bat viruses.
With regards to the ongoing discussion on CRT. Apparently a US battalion commander is under investigation for comments including “If you are white, you are part of the problem”. It is, for those who know about these things, the 1-8 “fighting eagles infantry. His comments do not seem to be being met with unalloyed enthusiasm by this serving under him.
That quoted comment from the commander is, for want of a better word, racist.
Another case of 'they are exactly what they accuse you of'.
I've generally switched off from all this (by logging out of twitter) but some things you can't help notice, like the Yale psychiatrist who admitted to fantasies about shooting white people in a public university seminar. Maybe she should get together with the battalion commander cited above.
All normal. Just people getting on with their jobs. Nothing at all to see here. Or - if you are Philip Thompson - it is the rebirth of Western Civilisation!
There was a good piece in an Australian magazine the other day, which argues well the point that a lot of the problems in Western society are much more about class than race.
That was a large part of the recent derided government race enquiry, whose conclusions are being ignored.
I would agree that class is a bigger issue than race, but they do heavily interest.
At risk of doxxing myself as some sort of Bennite Corbanista, at least so far as education is concerned, class is a far bigger issue than race, and working class BAME communities have worse outcomes than middle class BAME communities, as do White working class communities.
That doesn’t have to be the case.
I am spending a morning next week with Katherine Birbalsingh to see the work she is doing at Michaela (my wife is a fan) so will be interesting… but she is getting very good results from a BAME working class group of kids
Katherine Birbalsingh is brilliant, I am a big fan as well. I particularly like her theory that all people are a bit racist. The sad reality is that we all probably make judgements about groups based on physical characteristics, even if it is only at a subconscious level.
Yes but we need another word for this very human phenomenon, it is not even ultimately about recent but about comfort with “like” versus “not-like”.
“Racism” conjures up the full spectrum of horrors from Ollie Robinson’s tweets right through to the ku klux klan on horseback, carrying torches.
Yes agreed - I thought Kahnemanns book 'thinking fast and slow' (a massive bestseller) explains it really well, we are just massively flawed creatures, this is how we have evolved to be through milleniums of evolution. This is why the certainty that the woke have on many subjects is so ridiculous.
That book should be required reading for everyone. I think it explains why the subconscious uses pattern recognition very heavily, and obviously that has an impact on how we view race and colour, and therefore how racism is a natural state for humans. I am not sure it gives any clues as to whether one should be woke or not though, it is more an inwards looking book.
I think it is a good book but most of the really interesting ideas are set out in the first few chapters, it gets a bit long.
I am not saying that the book promotes any sort of political ideology, it just tends to reinforce the idea that humans are highly flawed and this cannot really change to any significant degree. This cannot easily be reconciled with utopian political or religious projects that seek to lift humans out of their natural condition.
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
And another example of journalists being more like political activists
And there is zero evidence that the conversation ever happened
The conversation being reported is evidence that it happened. If you mean there is no proof, you might be right although there could be a recording.
No. Journalists have made things up in the past. This is such a perfectly crafted anti-Tory/anti-Brexit nugget that I am sceptical of its origins
ICYMI, this is what we are talking about, from Politico's London Playbook and tweeted by Marina Hyde:-
Fighting talk: One Conservative Brexiteer said Biden should row in behind Britain and not the EU in the dispute to break the deadlock. “America should remember who their allies are,” the person told Playbook. Asked what Johnson should tell Biden, the MP added: “Unfortunately he’s so senile that he probably won’t remember what we tell him anyway. Unless an aide is listening I’m not sure he’s going to remember for very long.” Erm. Wow. https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/politico-london-playbook-bojo-meets-jobi-on-the-ground-at-the-g7-dom-vs-matt-round-2/
Yes. Unsourced, explosive, offensive and targeted at Tories and Brexiteers.
Really depends whether this is being said on the record by Lord Clarke or off the record by the assistant secretary of Bootle and Walton Conservative association during a game of darts. Not much to see.
However, on the bigger issue. The UK has, of course, been shafted, mostly under TMs watch, on the island of Ireland issue, to the extent that it is unsustainable, which means it was folly to go there.
If nothing else in comprehensible sadly the return to violence in the province will, if nothing is done, be unmistakeable. From a Unionist point of view (one with which I have almost no sympathy, being a supporter of a united Ireland) the deal is a clear step, without consent, away from the union. Sausagegate is required to make the truth clear and simple.
If one turned the tables and said that the right deal for no border within Ireland is one in which the whole of the British Isles is to be treated as a single unit, and the the de facto (no de iure) boundary is between the whole island of Ireland the the rest of the EU, the EU would not accept it for an instant.
That is what they are asking us to accept. Naturally we should not have done so, but we are where we are. The status quo is literally incendiary.
Consent was the big argument - stormont can reject it in 3.5 years
It doesn't appear the EU is factoring this into their calculations.....
Or the EU can count.
It's safe to assume the nationalist parties will support the Protocol. It's conceivable that the Alliance would vote against it, but it's damn hard to imagine circumstances leading to that. There aren't enough Unionist MLAs to vote the Protocol down.
The Stormont Consent Process might look convincing, but it's only weakly connected to anything. Bozza was sold a pup, liable to create even more mess than Dilyn.
As far as I can see the Stormont vote is a simple majority vote. If Alliance abstain (which given their largely soft unionist support...) then Unionism > Nationalism in terms of MLAs.
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
I thought spaceports were more suited for closer to the equator, so the UK is not geographically suited for a spaceport.
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
The thing you don't get is that disastrous May had screwed the UK royally by agreeing to resolve the NI issue first.
Having done that, the Protocol and the Treaty we got was the best option on the table. It extricated the UK from the EU without a No Deal Brexit, it allowed GB to be completely free and left the UK in charge of implementing the Protocol.
That was then and this is now. Now that's been achieved, its on the UK to ensure the Protocol doesn't work as the EU wants it to. The Protocol was the EU's "prize" not something the UK ever wanted, it was a price we chose to pay to get the best option available - now we need to make it clear their prize was a dud. Barnier spent year buying an unworkable Protocol and it is not in the UK's interests anymore to make it work.
To be fair to May her deal did lead to alignment to the regulations of the single market and customs union for the whole UK until a solution could be found for the Irish border, thus there was no need for a border in the Irish Sea.
Once Boris went for a harder Brexit Deal for GB that meant a border in the Irish Sea to keep an open border in Ireland.
The only way to resolve that would be to return to something closer to May's Deal and closer alignment to the single market and customs union or to rip up the NIP leading to the end of the UK and EU trade deal and impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, soothing loyalist concerns but inflaming Nationalist resentment in the process
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
I thought spaceports were more suited for closer to the equator, so the UK is not geographically suited for a spaceport.
Is that not correct?
It depends on exactly what you’re doing with it. If you’re sending a rocket to most normal orbits then yes, you want to be as close to the equator as possible, and preferably with sea to your East as that’s where they fly. Florida!
If you want a polar orbit, then it’s better to be as far north or south as possible.
If you’re doing joyrides to ‘space’ and back down again, it doesn’t really matter where you’re located.
And another example of journalists being more like political activists
And there is zero evidence that the conversation ever happened
The conversation being reported is evidence that it happened. If you mean there is no proof, you might be right although there could be a recording.
No. Journalists have made things up in the past. This is such a perfectly crafted anti-Tory/anti-Brexit nugget that I am sceptical of its origins
ICYMI, this is what we are talking about, from Politico's London Playbook and tweeted by Marina Hyde:-
Fighting talk: One Conservative Brexiteer said Biden should row in behind Britain and not the EU in the dispute to break the deadlock. “America should remember who their allies are,” the person told Playbook. Asked what Johnson should tell Biden, the MP added: “Unfortunately he’s so senile that he probably won’t remember what we tell him anyway. Unless an aide is listening I’m not sure he’s going to remember for very long.” Erm. Wow. https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/politico-london-playbook-bojo-meets-jobi-on-the-ground-at-the-g7-dom-vs-matt-round-2/
Yes. Unsourced, explosive, offensive and targeted at Tories and Brexiteers.
Really depends whether this is being said on the record by Lord Clarke or off the record by the assistant secretary of Bootle and Walton Conservative association during a game of darts. Not much to see.
However, on the bigger issue. The UK has, of course, been shafted, mostly under TMs watch, on the island of Ireland issue, to the extent that it is unsustainable, which means it was folly to go there.
If nothing else in comprehensible sadly the return to violence in the province will, if nothing is done, be unmistakeable. From a Unionist point of view (one with which I have almost no sympathy, being a supporter of a united Ireland) the deal is a clear step, without consent, away from the union. Sausagegate is required to make the truth clear and simple.
If one turned the tables and said that the right deal for no border within Ireland is one in which the whole of the British Isles is to be treated as a single unit, and the the de facto (no de iure) boundary is between the whole island of Ireland the the rest of the EU, the EU would not accept it for an instant.
That is what they are asking us to accept. Naturally we should not have done so, but we are where we are. The status quo is literally incendiary.
Consent was the big argument - stormont can reject it in 3.5 years
It doesn't appear the EU is factoring this into their calculations.....
Or the EU can count.
It's safe to assume the nationalist parties will support the Protocol. It's conceivable that the Alliance would vote against it, but it's damn hard to imagine circumstances leading to that. There aren't enough Unionist MLAs to vote the Protocol down.
The Stormont Consent Process might look convincing, but it's only weakly connected to anything. Bozza was sold a pup, liable to create even more mess than Dilyn.
As far as I can see the Stormont vote is a simple majority vote. If Alliance abstain (which given their largely soft unionist support...) then Unionism > Nationalism in terms of MLAs.
But the Alliance is also younger, post-sectarian and Brexit-hating. They could abstain, but it seems unlikely.
That's why the DUP hate the Protocol. Theoretically, they can escape, but in practice they can't.
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
I thought spaceports were more suited for closer to the equator, so the UK is not geographically suited for a spaceport.
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
I thought spaceports were more suited for closer to the equator, so the UK is not geographically suited for a spaceport.
Is that not correct?
Partly. The real reason is that you want to launch Eastward for most orbits.
Dropping first stages on France, while popular with some, might lead to a certain coldness in diplomatic circles.
Polar launch is a different issue - hence some interest in Scotland.
One advantage of using a plane launched system is that in theory you can simply fly to where you need to launch from. Hence Newquay.
The slight problem is that neither of the plane launch systems Branson is touting are likely to make money - one is a suborbital vomit comet for the rich which don't work very well, and the other is an expensive small sat launcher.
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
I thought spaceports were more suited for closer to the equator, so the UK is not geographically suited for a spaceport.
Is that not correct?
You are a doomster and/or gloomster with an insufficiency of Great British Spunk. Sort yourself out.
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
The thing you don't get is that disastrous May had screwed the UK royally by agreeing to resolve the NI issue first.
Having done that, the Protocol and the Treaty we got was the best option on the table. It extricated the UK from the EU without a No Deal Brexit, it allowed GB to be completely free and left the UK in charge of implementing the Protocol.
That was then and this is now. Now that's been achieved, its on the UK to ensure the Protocol doesn't work as the EU wants it to. The Protocol was the EU's "prize" not something the UK ever wanted, it was a price we chose to pay to get the best option available - now we need to make it clear their prize was a dud. Barnier spent year buying an unworkable Protocol and it is not in the UK's interests anymore to make it work.
To be fair to May her deal did lead to alignment to the regulations of the single market and customs union for the whole UK until a solution could be found for the Irish border, thus there was no need for a border in the Irish Sea.
Once Boris went for a harder Brexit Deal for GB that meant a border in the Irish Sea to keep an open border in Ireland.
The only way to resolve that would be to return to something closer to May's Deal and closer alignment to the single market and customs union or to rip up the NIP leading to the end of the UK and EU trade deal and impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, soothing loyalist concerns but inflaming Nationalist resentment in the process
Indeed and look I know it's crazy talk to keep going on about it but how are you positioned wrt the "something no British PM could ever do" thingy about the Irish Sea border?
Yes absolutely. Boris's deal was infinitely better for Britain than May's deal ever was.
The Protocol the EU secured was a price we needed to pay, but its not one we need to make work and that where Barnier has fouled up. He forced us to sign this under duress, and it was better than any alternative suggested, but now the duress has gone so there's little reason to continue with this.
If you want a deal to last make sure both parties are happy with it.
I hate this Government. Hate it. Because of the political decision to let Delta/Indian Variant seed here by failing to close the borders we are, instead of lifting restrictions, about to go backwards. I don’t think I can bear another lockdown. But in two, three weeks the NHS will not be able to cope with this
Where is the evidence that the NHS will be overwhelmed in two to three weeks?
It’s a little longer than that, but the numbers I’ve seen suggest a current doubling time in number of cases of 9 days. Cases are currently running at ~5000 / day, that’s ~4 doublings from the January peak, so about a month + a bit away.
Except we’re supposed to be lifting restrictions on the 21st (one doubling away) which can only reduce the doubling time, I’d guess it’ll make things 2x worse, so you get to the 4 doublings in three weeks or so.
Mitigating against this is that the majority of the cases will be in younger people who are less likely to need hospitalisation. However, the delta variant is believed to increase the risk of hospitalisation across the board. Also, there are enough vulnerable people in older age groups who haven’t been vaccinated to cause problems if the infection rates get high enough to reach them. (At this point the older individuals are unlikely to infect each other due to high vaccination rates - we shouldn’t get a repeat of the care homes fiasco of last year.)
It’s the nature of expontential growth that everything seems fine until suddenly it very much isn’t. When you see exponential growth, it’s vital to work out what that growth means in the future in order to work out what to do now.
(Feel free to pick holes in my numbers - they’re all from memory & I may have missed something either way.)
There’s no way Stormont would reject the Protocol. That provision is a dead letter.
Although it’s maddening, Philip - and Allister Heath in the article above - have this right, at least in terms of the current state of play.
It’s maddening because Boris lied to me, to you, to Northern Irish voters and to the EU to get his “oven-ready deal”. He clearly had no intention of honouring said deal and is not doing so now.
The problem for the EU, is that any deal does actually require the compliance of the U.K.
Its not like the EU can “walk away”, whereas the U.K. can continue to fuck about with “temporary suspensions” and non-co-operation.
The weight of negotiation pulls toward implementing the protocol on the *UK’s terms*, ie via trusted trader schemes blah blah.
I should add that May’s deal was superior in that it kept the whole country in a de facto (but not de jure) customs union until such time as we figured out the same stuff we are still trying to figure out now. It is still not really obvious why the Brexiters nixed it (although it is clear why Boris did so).
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
The thing you don't get is that disastrous May had screwed the UK royally by agreeing to resolve the NI issue first.
Having done that, the Protocol and the Treaty we got was the best option on the table. It extricated the UK from the EU without a No Deal Brexit, it allowed GB to be completely free and left the UK in charge of implementing the Protocol.
That was then and this is now. Now that's been achieved, its on the UK to ensure the Protocol doesn't work as the EU wants it to. The Protocol was the EU's "prize" not something the UK ever wanted, it was a price we chose to pay to get the best option available - now we need to make it clear their prize was a dud. Barnier spent year buying an unworkable Protocol and it is not in the UK's interests anymore to make it work.
To be fair to May her deal did lead to alignment to the regulations of the single market and customs union for the whole UK until a solution could be found for the Irish border, thus there was no need for a border in the Irish Sea.
Once Boris went for a harder Brexit Deal for GB that meant a border in the Irish Sea to keep an open border in Ireland.
The only way to resolve that would be to return to something closer to May's Deal and closer alignment to the single market and customs union or to rip up the NIP leading to the end of the UK and EU trade deal and impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, soothing loyalist concerns but inflaming Nationalist resentment in the process
Indeed and look I know it's crazy talk to keep going on about it but how are you positioned wrt the "something no British PM could ever do" thingy about the Irish Sea border?
Personally I preferred May's Deal but Boris won a majority in 2019 for his deal so as far as I am concerned that is where we are until 2024.
Ironically if Starmer becomes PM after the next general election we would probably end up with something closer to May's Deal in the end anyway
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
The thing you don't get is that disastrous May had screwed the UK royally by agreeing to resolve the NI issue first.
Having done that, the Protocol and the Treaty we got was the best option on the table. It extricated the UK from the EU without a No Deal Brexit, it allowed GB to be completely free and left the UK in charge of implementing the Protocol.
That was then and this is now. Now that's been achieved, its on the UK to ensure the Protocol doesn't work as the EU wants it to. The Protocol was the EU's "prize" not something the UK ever wanted, it was a price we chose to pay to get the best option available - now we need to make it clear their prize was a dud. Barnier spent year buying an unworkable Protocol and it is not in the UK's interests anymore to make it work.
With regard to your last para Philip that is not the way to negotiate a contract i.e. agree to something and then not make it work, whether outside of the contract terms, or within them but not within the spirit of the intentions. It is negotiating in bad faith and ensures things will go wrong.
In the past I have often heard it said 'we don't need a contract do we'. The point about a contract is hopefully you never do need to refer to it and relationships develop and expand, etc, etc.
You only really need the contract when things go wrong and you get into a dispute. Planning to deliberately put yourself in that position from the beginning is not a good move in terms of expanding and improving relations.
When I saw that Keir was introducing self-ID for trans yesterday, my heart sank.
In what possible universe is this a good position to stake out during a key by-election.
The government is fighting a culture war, and winning.
Keir is an idiot. He must stand down immediately after Batley & Spen which is increasingly looking like a loss (I previously had it as a win).
Anyone know what would count as a middle way moderate inclusive position that all thoughtful sides can agree on, and what it would look like?
On the trans issue?
Take the politics out of it and get the medical professionals involved. If there is a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria then proceed from there.
You clearly don't know many trans people who have had to interact with the medical profession if you think that would take the politics out of it. And aside from that, pre-pandemic it was somewhere around a two year wait just to see a specialist who could make such a diagnosis.
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
I thought spaceports were more suited for closer to the equator, so the UK is not geographically suited for a spaceport.
Is that not correct?
You are a doomster and/or gloomster with an insufficiency of Great British Spunk. Sort yourself out.
The uk is ideally located for polar-to-polar orbit launches.
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
The thing you don't get is that disastrous May had screwed the UK royally by agreeing to resolve the NI issue first.
Having done that, the Protocol and the Treaty we got was the best option on the table. It extricated the UK from the EU without a No Deal Brexit, it allowed GB to be completely free and left the UK in charge of implementing the Protocol.
That was then and this is now. Now that's been achieved, its on the UK to ensure the Protocol doesn't work as the EU wants it to. The Protocol was the EU's "prize" not something the UK ever wanted, it was a price we chose to pay to get the best option available - now we need to make it clear their prize was a dud. Barnier spent year buying an unworkable Protocol and it is not in the UK's interests anymore to make it work.
To be fair to May her deal did lead to alignment to the regulations of the single market and customs union for the whole UK until a solution could be found for the Irish border, thus there was no need for a border in the Irish Sea.
Once Boris went for a harder Brexit Deal for GB that meant a border in the Irish Sea to keep an open border in Ireland.
The only way to resolve that would be to return to something closer to May's Deal and closer alignment to the single market and customs union or to rip up the NIP leading to the end of the UK and EU trade deal and impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, soothing loyalist concerns but inflaming Nationalist resentment in the process
Yes her deal led to alignment by subjugating the entire UK rather than supposedly subjugating Northern Ireland alone (but leaving it to the UK to implement that, and guess what we're not incentivised to do so). Stupid, stupid idea. May's deal is dead and buried and going back to that is never going to happen.
The only way to resolve is a technological solution but a technological solution requires both parties to be incentivised to make compromises, eg accepting Trusted Traders etc - under May's deal the EU would never have any incentive to make any compromises so there'd be no way out of the backstop ever.
Under the Protocol with the UK playing hard and fast with it, the EU is now on the hook and irritated with the situation in a way they'd never been had they subjugated us into their circle of influence. Now either the Protocol can die a death of a thousand cuts as the UK ceases to implement it as the EU wants, or its in their interests to reach a negotiated compromise involving Trusted Traders etc and the technological solution will have been found.
There is an ongoing global effort, to design, manufacture, and clinically assess vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. Over the course of the ongoing pandemic a number of new SARS-CoV-2 virus isolates or variants of concern (VoC) have been identified containing mutations that negatively impact the role of neutralising antibodies. In this study we describe the generation and preclinical assessment of a ChAdOx1-vectored vaccine against the variant of concern B.1.351 (AZD2816). We demonstrate AZD2816 is immunogenic after a single dose and when used as a booster dose in animals primed with original vaccine AZD1222, we see no evidence of original antigenic sin but high titre antibodies against a number of variant spike proteins. In addition, neutralisation titres against B.1.351 (Beta), B.1.617.1 (Kappa) and B.1.617.2 (Delta), are induced in these boost regimens. These data support the ongoing clinical development and testing of this new variant vaccine.
Imagine spending five years telling anyone that will listen "we hold all the cards", "they need us more than we need them", and "no deal is better than a bad deal", only to then switch directly to "THEY MADE US SIGN A DEAL UNDER DURESS".
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
I thought spaceports were more suited for closer to the equator, so the UK is not geographically suited for a spaceport.
Is that not correct?
It depends what orbits and payloads you're going for.
We're well-suited for small satellites in polar orbits.
There’s no way Stormont would reject the Protocol. That provision is a dead letter.
Although it’s maddening, Philip - and Allister Heath in the article above - have this right, at least in terms of the current state of play.
It’s maddening because Boris lied to me, to you, to Northern Irish voters and to the EU to get his “oven-ready deal”. He clearly had no intention of honouring said deal and is not doing so now.
The problem for the EU, is that any deal does actually require the compliance of the U.K.
Its not like the EU can “walk away”, whereas the U.K. can continue to fuck about with “temporary suspensions” and non-co-operation.
The weight of negotiation pulls toward implementing the protocol on the *UK’s terms*, ie via trusted trader schemes blah blah.
I should add that May’s deal was superior in that it kept the whole country in a de facto (but not de jure) customs union until such time as we figured out the same stuff we are still trying to figure out now. It is still not really obvious why the Brexiters nixed it (although it is clear why Boris did so).
Thank you.
Though your final paragraph is answered by your prior paragraphs. The weight of negotiation only pulls towards implementing the protocol on the UK's terms because the UK is capable of playing silly buggers and being tough in negotiations, just as I always recommended.
Had the UK accepted May's deal then there would be absolutely no weight of negotiation in the UK's favour, it would be 100% in the EU's favour.
With regards to the ongoing discussion on CRT. Apparently a US battalion commander is under investigation for comments including “If you are white, you are part of the problem”. It is, for those who know about these things, the 1-8 “fighting eagles infantry. His comments do not seem to be being met with unalloyed enthusiasm by this serving under him.
That quoted comment from the commander is, for want of a better word, racist.
Another case of 'they are exactly what they accuse you of'.
I've generally switched off from all this (by logging out of twitter) but some things you can't help notice, like the Yale psychiatrist who admitted to fantasies about shooting white people in a public university seminar. Maybe she should get together with the battalion commander cited above.
All normal. Just people getting on with their jobs. Nothing at all to see here. Or - if you are Philip Thompson - it is the rebirth of Western Civilisation!
There was a good piece in an Australian magazine the other day, which argues well the point that a lot of the problems in Western society are much more about class than race.
That was a large part of the recent derided government race enquiry, whose conclusions are being ignored.
I would agree that class is a bigger issue than race, but they do heavily interest.
At risk of doxxing myself as some sort of Bennite Corbanista, at least so far as education is concerned, class is a far bigger issue than race, and working class BAME communities have worse outcomes than middle class BAME communities, as do White working class communities.
That doesn’t have to be the case.
I am spending a morning next week with Katherine Birbalsingh to see the work she is doing at Michaela (my wife is a fan) so will be interesting… but she is getting very good results from a BAME working class group of kids
Katherine Birbalsingh is brilliant, I am a big fan as well. I particularly like her theory that all people are a bit racist. The sad reality is that we all probably make judgements about groups based on physical characteristics, even if it is only at a subconscious level.
Yes but we need another word for this very human phenomenon, it is not even ultimately about recent but about comfort with “like” versus “not-like”.
“Racism” conjures up the full spectrum of horrors from Ollie Robinson’s tweets right through to the ku klux klan on horseback, carrying torches.
Yes agreed - I thought Kahnemanns book 'thinking fast and slow' (a massive bestseller) explains it really well, we are just massively flawed creatures, this is how we have evolved to be through milleniums of evolution. This is why the certainty that the woke have on many subjects is so ridiculous.
Difference comes in unlimited forms, and indeed what is “different” to me, might not be to you.
We can all get behind tolerance for “difference”. Indeed it is a core liberal belief.
In fact, in the vague, third-hand, christian values I was raised by my parents, I was always told to look beyond difference and that all people were worthy of respect and dignity.
Let’s get rid of woke and just...encourage tolerance and respect.
I think that's reasonable. Empathy would be good, too (which is the positive side of woke), but unlike tolerance and respect, it's not something you can reasonably expect from people who don't possess the capacity.
When I saw that Keir was introducing self-ID for trans yesterday, my heart sank.
In what possible universe is this a good position to stake out during a key by-election.
The government is fighting a culture war, and winning.
Keir is an idiot. He must stand down immediately after Batley & Spen which is increasingly looking like a loss (I previously had it as a win).
Anyone know what would count as a middle way moderate inclusive position that all thoughtful sides can agree on, and what it would look like?
On the trans issue?
Take the politics out of it and get the medical professionals involved. If there is a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria then proceed from there.
You clearly don't know many trans people who have had to interact with the medical profession if you think that would take the politics out of it. And aside from that, pre-pandemic it was somewhere around a two year wait just to see a specialist who could make such a diagnosis.
I’m told it’s currently a seven year wait for treatment, assuming everyone stays on the waiting list & the number of medical staff available doesn’t change. (And recruitment is going to be a problem: who would want to dedicate themselves to this area in the current political climate - only the brave frankly, given the distinct posibility that the government shuts the whole thing down as part of their culture wars & wrecks your career.) Obviously some will drop off the list, having given up on ever getting treatment, so the real wait for those that stick it out will be somewhat shorter.
A lot of the media waffle about this makes it seem as if people are walking into the NHS and walking out with a pile of hormones and a surgery appointment. Nothing could be further from the truth & regardless of your opinions of ”transness” as a thing, I personally think it’s a reasonable position that transition is geniunely the best option for a group of people who are otherwise pretty much doomed to a life of dysphoria & consequent mental illness. That group is currently being utterly failed by the NHS.
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
I thought spaceports were more suited for closer to the equator, so the UK is not geographically suited for a spaceport.
Is that not correct?
Depends which orbit you are trying to acquire. Branson is sub-orbital so I don't think it matters.
If you want a polar orbit then Shetland or the far north of Scotland is what you want (hence the proposed launch site near Durness).
With regards to the ongoing discussion on CRT. Apparently a US battalion commander is under investigation for comments including “If you are white, you are part of the problem”. It is, for those who know about these things, the 1-8 “fighting eagles infantry. His comments do not seem to be being met with unalloyed enthusiasm by this serving under him.
That quoted comment from the commander is, for want of a better word, racist.
Another case of 'they are exactly what they accuse you of'.
I've generally switched off from all this (by logging out of twitter) but some things you can't help notice, like the Yale psychiatrist who admitted to fantasies about shooting white people in a public university seminar. Maybe she should get together with the battalion commander cited above.
All normal. Just people getting on with their jobs. Nothing at all to see here. Or - if you are Philip Thompson - it is the rebirth of Western Civilisation!
There was a good piece in an Australian magazine the other day, which argues well the point that a lot of the problems in Western society are much more about class than race.
That was a large part of the recent derided government race enquiry, whose conclusions are being ignored.
I would agree that class is a bigger issue than race, but they do heavily interest.
At risk of doxxing myself as some sort of Bennite Corbanista, at least so far as education is concerned, class is a far bigger issue than race, and working class BAME communities have worse outcomes than middle class BAME communities, as do White working class communities.
That doesn’t have to be the case.
I am spending a morning next week with Katherine Birbalsingh to see the work she is doing at Michaela (my wife is a fan) so will be interesting… but she is getting very good results from a BAME working class group of kids
Will be interested to hear what you think.
What do individuals who's career and platform is built on representing XYZ as a group of "oppressed" "victims" do when their chosen group of victims demonstrate that they are not victims, and can do quite well for themselves, thank-you very much?
May re-engaging such people back into the mainstream (how?) be a way of dealing with identity politics?
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
The thing you don't get is that disastrous May had screwed the UK royally by agreeing to resolve the NI issue first.
Having done that, the Protocol and the Treaty we got was the best option on the table. It extricated the UK from the EU without a No Deal Brexit, it allowed GB to be completely free and left the UK in charge of implementing the Protocol.
That was then and this is now. Now that's been achieved, its on the UK to ensure the Protocol doesn't work as the EU wants it to. The Protocol was the EU's "prize" not something the UK ever wanted, it was a price we chose to pay to get the best option available - now we need to make it clear their prize was a dud. Barnier spent year buying an unworkable Protocol and it is not in the UK's interests anymore to make it work.
With regard to your last para Philip that is not the way to negotiate a contract i.e. agree to something and then not make it work, whether outside of the contract terms, or within them but not within the spirit of the intentions. It is negotiating in bad faith and ensures things will go wrong.
In the past I have often heard it said 'we don't need a contract do we'. The point about a contract is hopefully you never do need to refer to it and relationships develop and expand, etc, etc.
You only really need the contract when things go wrong and you get into a dispute. Planning to deliberately put yourself in that position from the beginning is not a good move in terms of expanding and improving relations.
Negotiating "in bad faith and ensuring things will go wrong" was the only way out of the mess May had created.
Nobody else has ever come up with a better alternative that ensured that: The UK got a trade deal, the UK was set free of EU rules, and the GFA was respected.
Improving relations wasn't the objective. Getting out of the EU's orbit was the objective. Besides Boris was remarkably honest about all this: remember him saying to NI traders on camera "if you get asked to fill in paperwork put it in the bin, I am PM and will not demand it" which was done before we ratified the deal? And about five months before the EU ratified the deal? The EU ratified the deal well after we'd made clear how we were implementing the Protocol, if they weren't happy with that they could have nixed the deal.
nationalism ultimately exists only to support itself, it is never truly utilitarian. This is the perfect example of that. Wilson’s argument is that the extra money for public services is bad because it is not ‘ours’ - but that is only true if you accept the more narrow, nationalist definition of who we are. The money is ours for as long as we remain in the UK. The unsustainable deficit only becomes real if leave.
Like nationalists the world over, they are spending all their time trying to work out how to solve problems that are caused only by their nationalism.
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
I thought spaceports were more suited for closer to the equator, so the UK is not geographically suited for a spaceport.
Is that not correct?
Depends on the orbit you're looking for, but overall, yes. Ascension Island would make a good launchpad, but would require billions to develop. The next Boris folly, perhaps ?
There’s no way Stormont would reject the Protocol. That provision is a dead letter.
Although it’s maddening, Philip - and Allister Heath in the article above - have this right, at least in terms of the current state of play.
It’s maddening because Boris lied to me, to you, to Northern Irish voters and to the EU to get his “oven-ready deal”. He clearly had no intention of honouring said deal and is not doing so now.
The problem for the EU, is that any deal does actually require the compliance of the U.K.
Its not like the EU can “walk away”, whereas the U.K. can continue to fuck about with “temporary suspensions” and non-co-operation.
The weight of negotiation pulls toward implementing the protocol on the *UK’s terms*, ie via trusted trader schemes blah blah.
I should add that May’s deal was superior in that it kept the whole country in a de facto (but not de jure) customs union until such time as we figured out the same stuff we are still trying to figure out now. It is still not really obvious why the Brexiters nixed it (although it is clear why Boris did so).
Thank you.
Though your final paragraph is answered by your prior paragraphs. The weight of negotiation only pulls towards implementing the protocol on the UK's terms because the UK is capable of playing silly buggers and being tough in negotiations, just as I always recommended.
Had the UK accepted May's deal then there would be absolutely no weight of negotiation in the UK's favour, it would be 100% in the EU's favour.
The reason - often cited by @rcs1000 and @Richard_Nabavi - for May’s deal also pulling in the UK’s direction was that it allowed us the benefits of the customs union with few of the costs.
It was therefore an uncomfortable status quo for the EU and incentivised them to agree a longer term solution for us.
It also avoided all the bad faith (which does have a cost, just difficult to quantify), paramilitary violence, all the “teething troubles” etc etc.
The Brexiters nixed it because they feared it precluded independent trading deals, and did not trust the EU to agree to our leaving this de facto customs union.
With regards to the ongoing discussion on CRT. Apparently a US battalion commander is under investigation for comments including “If you are white, you are part of the problem”. It is, for those who know about these things, the 1-8 “fighting eagles infantry. His comments do not seem to be being met with unalloyed enthusiasm by this serving under him.
That quoted comment from the commander is, for want of a better word, racist.
Another case of 'they are exactly what they accuse you of'.
I've generally switched off from all this (by logging out of twitter) but some things you can't help notice, like the Yale psychiatrist who admitted to fantasies about shooting white people in a public university seminar. Maybe she should get together with the battalion commander cited above.
All normal. Just people getting on with their jobs. Nothing at all to see here. Or - if you are Philip Thompson - it is the rebirth of Western Civilisation!
There was a good piece in an Australian magazine the other day, which argues well the point that a lot of the problems in Western society are much more about class than race.
That was a large part of the recent derided government race enquiry, whose conclusions are being ignored.
I would agree that class is a bigger issue than race, but they do heavily interest.
At risk of doxxing myself as some sort of Bennite Corbanista, at least so far as education is concerned, class is a far bigger issue than race, and working class BAME communities have worse outcomes than middle class BAME communities, as do White working class communities.
That doesn’t have to be the case.
I am spending a morning next week with Katherine Birbalsingh to see the work she is doing at Michaela (my wife is a fan) so will be interesting… but she is getting very good results from a BAME working class group of kids
Katherine Birbalsingh is brilliant, I am a big fan as well. I particularly like her theory that all people are a bit racist. The sad reality is that we all probably make judgements about groups based on physical characteristics, even if it is only at a subconscious level.
Yes but we need another word for this very human phenomenon, it is not even ultimately about recent but about comfort with “like” versus “not-like”.
“Racism” conjures up the full spectrum of horrors from Ollie Robinson’s tweets right through to the ku klux klan on horseback, carrying torches.
Yes agreed - I thought Kahnemanns book 'thinking fast and slow' (a massive bestseller) explains it really well, we are just massively flawed creatures, this is how we have evolved to be through milleniums of evolution. This is why the certainty that the woke have on many subjects is so ridiculous.
That book should be required reading for everyone. I think it explains why the subconscious uses pattern recognition very heavily, and obviously that has an impact on how we view race and colour, and therefore how racism is a natural state for humans. I am not sure it gives any clues as to whether one should be woke or not though, it is more an inwards looking book.
I fear you are extrapolating wildly from anything Kahneman actually said. But even if something is natural, it does not make it desirable or even neutral, like death from bat viruses.
Of course! For the avoidance of any doubt racism is neither desirable or neutral! The impact of Kahneman's research on how our minds work is that simply trying to be colour-blind, as many critics of woke suggest, can never work as that will reduce conscious racism, but not sub conscious racism that happens "naturally". And agree he did not go into the specific topic in any depth at all, it is about the mind and its delusions.
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
There's been a space port thing going on there for years. Branson is prime mover, I think. Quite a few locals have pointed to the New Mexico comedy, and don't think it should go anywhere.
I thought spaceports were more suited for closer to the equator, so the UK is not geographically suited for a spaceport.
Is that not correct?
Depends on the orbit you're looking for, but overall, yes. Ascension Island would make a good launchpad, but would require billions to develop. The next Boris folly, perhaps ?
Finally, a purpose for the Pitcairns. Apart from providing a fig leaf for our entering the TPPA.
Here is Bill Clinton casually talking on a chat show about UFOs, confirming there are things we can’t identity / don’t understand and calmly pointing out how big the universe is.
Like Obama, he still gets the Presidential Daily Bulletin remember.
Comments
That being his position, it puts pressure on the EU to compromise in reality.
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1402899541582565377?s=20
https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1402753977628954628?s=20
Normalising trans as having full and equal dignity in society is highly worthwhile.
New Labour is he/him and he/they. New Labour is she/her and she/they.
Because New Labour is All the Pronouns.
Me, for one...
Not as bad as it could've been, although the joys of insomnia have seen me up at about 5am today and yesterday.
While the Unionist parties are against it, the Nationalist parties and Alliance are in favour. Without the Alliance party turning against it, there seems to be no possible path to a majority against consent.
https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1402894867504799745?s=20
Though it does call to mind this marvellous Sam Houston-ism - "I humble myself before God and there the list ends."
Think they used it in the recent Alamo movie...
We can all get behind tolerance for “difference”. Indeed it is a core liberal belief.
In fact, in the vague, third-hand, christian values I was raised by my parents, I was always told to look beyond difference and that all people were worthy of respect and dignity.
Let’s get rid of woke and just...encourage tolerance and respect.
It's safe to assume the nationalist parties will support the Protocol.
It's conceivable that the Alliance would vote against it, but it's damn hard to imagine circumstances leading to that.
There aren't enough Unionist MLAs to vote the Protocol down.
The Stormont Consent Process might look convincing, but it's only weakly connected to anything.
Bozza was sold a pup, liable to create even more mess than Dilyn.
https://twitter.com/jamesward73/status/1402904768113254402?s=21
The thing you don't get is that disastrous May had screwed the UK royally by agreeing to resolve the NI issue first.
Having done that, the Protocol and the Treaty we got was the best option on the table. It extricated the UK from the EU without a No Deal Brexit, it allowed GB to be completely free and left the UK in charge of implementing the Protocol.
That was then and this is now. Now that's been achieved, its on the UK to ensure the Protocol doesn't work as the EU wants it to. The Protocol was the EU's "prize" not something the UK ever wanted, it was a price we chose to pay to get the best option available - now we need to make it clear their prize was a dud. Barnier spent year buying an unworkable Protocol and it is not in the UK's interests anymore to make it work.
The idea that a return to sectarian violence can be delayed for over 5 years seems optimistic.
It's a problem reasonable people face, being able to entertain ideas and see other perspectives without accepting them. Zealots just decry all heresy and heathens as immoral, to be coerced into obedience or reduced to nothing.
The former is necessary for nuance and democracy, the latter leads to absolutism and tyranny. And trying to stop someone going to university because she sang along to rap lyrics years ago. Or play cricket because he tweeted something a decade ago.
When did the 5'2" snaggletoothed jabroni develop a penchant for jackets with PRIME MINISTER emblazoned on them?
One disadvantage is that it normally cools down pretty quickly in the evening, so those warm mediterranean type evenings are even rarer here than they are inland.
I am not saying that the book promotes any sort of political ideology, it just tends to reinforce the idea that humans are highly flawed and this cannot really change to any significant degree. This cannot easily be reconciled with utopian political or religious projects that seek to lift humans out of their natural condition.
Some Tory MPs believe Dominic Cummings is planning to see what the Health Sec says before releasing proof.
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1402911262674231297?s=20
Is that not correct?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yhg7NmTeVg
https://twitter.com/t0nyyates/status/1402901278427168773?s=20
Once Boris went for a harder Brexit Deal for GB that meant a border in the Irish Sea to keep an open border in Ireland.
The only way to resolve that would be to return to something closer to May's Deal and closer alignment to the single market and customs union or to rip up the NIP leading to the end of the UK and EU trade deal and impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, soothing loyalist concerns but inflaming Nationalist resentment in the process
If you want a polar orbit, then it’s better to be as far north or south as possible.
If you’re doing joyrides to ‘space’ and back down again, it doesn’t really matter where you’re located.
That's why the DUP hate the Protocol. Theoretically, they can escape, but in practice they can't.
Dropping first stages on France, while popular with some, might lead to a certain coldness in diplomatic circles.
Polar launch is a different issue - hence some interest in Scotland.
One advantage of using a plane launched system is that in theory you can simply fly to where you need to launch from. Hence Newquay.
The slight problem is that neither of the plane launch systems Branson is touting are likely to make money - one is a suborbital vomit comet for the rich which don't work very well, and the other is an expensive small sat launcher.
The Protocol the EU secured was a price we needed to pay, but its not one we need to make work and that where Barnier has fouled up. He forced us to sign this under duress, and it was better than any alternative suggested, but now the duress has gone so there's little reason to continue with this.
If you want a deal to last make sure both parties are happy with it.
Except we’re supposed to be lifting restrictions on the 21st (one doubling away) which can only reduce the doubling time, I’d guess it’ll make things 2x worse, so you get to the 4 doublings in three weeks or so.
Mitigating against this is that the majority of the cases will be in younger people who are less likely to need hospitalisation. However, the delta variant is believed to increase the risk of hospitalisation across the board. Also, there are enough vulnerable people in older age groups who haven’t been vaccinated to cause problems if the infection rates get high enough to reach them. (At this point the older individuals are unlikely to infect each other due to high vaccination rates - we shouldn’t get a repeat of the care homes fiasco of last year.)
It’s the nature of expontential growth that everything seems fine until suddenly it very much isn’t. When you see exponential growth, it’s vital to work out what that growth means in the future in order to work out what to do now.
(Feel free to pick holes in my numbers - they’re all from memory & I may have missed something either way.)
Although it’s maddening, Philip - and Allister Heath in the article above - have this right, at least in terms of the current state of play.
It’s maddening because Boris lied to me, to you, to Northern Irish voters and to the EU to get his “oven-ready deal”. He clearly had no intention of honouring said deal and is not doing so now.
The problem for the EU, is that any deal does actually require the compliance of the U.K.
Its not like the EU can “walk away”, whereas the U.K. can continue to fuck about with “temporary suspensions” and non-co-operation.
The weight of negotiation pulls toward implementing the protocol on the *UK’s terms*, ie via trusted trader schemes blah blah.
I should add that May’s deal was superior in that it kept the whole country in a de facto (but not de jure) customs union until such time as we figured out the same stuff we are still trying to figure out now. It is still not really obvious why the Brexiters nixed it (although it is clear why Boris did so).
Ironically if Starmer becomes PM after the next general election we would probably end up with something closer to May's Deal in the end anyway
https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/1402915172369502210?s=20
In the past I have often heard it said 'we don't need a contract do we'. The point about a contract is hopefully you never do need to refer to it and relationships develop and expand, etc, etc.
You only really need the contract when things go wrong and you get into a dispute. Planning to deliberately put yourself in that position from the beginning is not a good move in terms of expanding and improving relations.
And aside from that, pre-pandemic it was somewhere around a two year wait just to see a specialist who could make such a diagnosis.
The only way to resolve is a technological solution but a technological solution requires both parties to be incentivised to make compromises, eg accepting Trusted Traders etc - under May's deal the EU would never have any incentive to make any compromises so there'd be no way out of the backstop ever.
Under the Protocol with the UK playing hard and fast with it, the EU is now on the hook and irritated with the situation in a way they'd never been had they subjugated us into their circle of influence. Now either the Protocol can die a death of a thousand cuts as the UK ceases to implement it as the EU wants, or its in their interests to reach a negotiated compromise involving Trusted Traders etc and the technological solution will have been found.
There is an ongoing global effort, to design, manufacture, and clinically assess vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. Over the course of the ongoing pandemic a number of new SARS-CoV-2 virus isolates or variants of concern (VoC) have been identified containing mutations that negatively impact the role of neutralising antibodies. In this study we describe the generation and preclinical assessment of a ChAdOx1-vectored vaccine against the variant of concern B.1.351 (AZD2816). We demonstrate AZD2816 is immunogenic after a single dose and when used as a booster dose in animals primed with original vaccine AZD1222, we see no evidence of original antigenic sin but high titre antibodies against a number of variant spike proteins. In addition, neutralisation titres against B.1.351 (Beta), B.1.617.1 (Kappa) and B.1.617.2 (Delta), are induced in these boost regimens. These data support the ongoing clinical development and testing of this new variant vaccine.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.08.447308v1
Fucking fraudsters.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1402917510345809924
We're well-suited for small satellites in polar orbits.
Though your final paragraph is answered by your prior paragraphs. The weight of negotiation only pulls towards implementing the protocol on the UK's terms because the UK is capable of playing silly buggers and being tough in negotiations, just as I always recommended.
Had the UK accepted May's deal then there would be absolutely no weight of negotiation in the UK's favour, it would be 100% in the EU's favour.
Will add 2nds at some point
Empathy would be good, too (which is the positive side of woke), but unlike tolerance and respect, it's not something you can reasonably expect from people who don't possess the capacity.
It seems that CV19 is on the march again around here in deepest Sussex. Suddenly lots of cases.
A lot of the media waffle about this makes it seem as if people are walking into the NHS and walking out with a pile of hormones and a surgery appointment. Nothing could be further from the truth & regardless of your opinions of ”transness” as a thing, I personally think it’s a reasonable position that transition is geniunely the best option for a group of people who are otherwise pretty much doomed to a life of dysphoria & consequent mental illness. That group is currently being utterly failed by the NHS.
If you want a polar orbit then Shetland or the far north of Scotland is what you want (hence the proposed launch site near Durness).
Edit: Sorry, too slow!
What do individuals who's career and platform is built on representing XYZ as a group of "oppressed" "victims" do when their chosen group of victims demonstrate that they are not victims, and can do quite well for themselves, thank-you very much?
May re-engaging such people back into the mainstream (how?) be a way of dealing with identity politics?
Nobody else has ever come up with a better alternative that ensured that: The UK got a trade deal, the UK was set free of EU rules, and the GFA was respected.
Improving relations wasn't the objective. Getting out of the EU's orbit was the objective. Besides Boris was remarkably honest about all this: remember him saying to NI traders on camera "if you get asked to fill in paperwork put it in the bin, I am PM and will not demand it" which was done before we ratified the deal? And about five months before the EU ratified the deal? The EU ratified the deal well after we'd made clear how we were implementing the Protocol, if they weren't happy with that they could have nixed the deal.
Like nationalists the world over, they are spending all their time trying to work out how to solve problems that are caused only by their nationalism.
https://notesonnationalism.substack.com/p/are-we-supposed-to-take-this-seriously
Ascension Island would make a good launchpad, but would require billions to develop. The next Boris folly, perhaps ?
It was therefore an uncomfortable status quo for the EU and incentivised them to agree a longer term solution for us.
It also avoided all the bad faith (which does have a cost, just difficult to quantify), paramilitary violence, all the “teething troubles” etc etc.
The Brexiters nixed it because they feared it precluded independent trading deals, and did not trust the EU to agree to our leaving this de facto customs union.
Apart from providing a fig leaf for our entering the TPPA.
Now cooking with a good Syrah on the go.
Feeling fine - unlike jab 1!
Here is Bill Clinton casually talking on a chat show about UFOs, confirming there are things we can’t identity / don’t understand and calmly pointing out how big the universe is.
Like Obama, he still gets the Presidential Daily Bulletin remember.