Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
The EU dictating UK investment decisions to the UK government is over
Bollocks. Your BritNat government just signed a “level playing field” treaty that explicitly says the exact opposite.
Maggie must be spinning in her grave that her party has morphed into the party of big government, state subsidy and picking winners. It’ll end in tears… for the taxpayers.
Creating jobs and green investments will end in 'tears' of joy for the taxpayers not pain
So you think civil servants and politicians are best placed to decide what companies produce stuff. Governments should be creating strategic policies (eg for green investment) they should not be perverting the market or deciding who gets the business by giving subsidies. I can't believe a Tory believes this. Why not go the whole hog and nationalise it?
Civil servants and politicians should not be allowed anywhere near business decisions. They bugger it up every time they interfere.
The difference is that there is a political will to move the green agenda faster than the market would led to its own devices
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
They're not entirely different things. The EEA is just a vehicle to push EU single market law into neighbouring states.
Indeed. The trade model going forwards is going to be the CP-TPP, based primarily on equivalence to global standards, and with little appetite for getting involved in day-to-day politics.
Its what the EEC always should have been, from a UK perspective. Shame it wasn't.
From today there are also things we need to do very differently. And one of the most important is to change our thinking around what cases in the Bailiwick means. We’ve associated it with hospitalisation, with deaths, with the potential for health services to be overwhelmed. We’ve justified what are really very strict and quite extreme travel restrictions because of those risks. But the risk profile has changed with more than 70% of entire population having had at least one dose. The data shows a full vaccination affords 95% protection against needing hospital care. Younger age-groups are significantly less vulnerable and already far less likely to become very ill and need hospital care. No, it’s not completely risk-free, it never will be no matter what we do. But it is a big change compared to the risk we faced before the vaccine. And as we no longer face the same levels of risk, we can no longer justify the same levels of restrictions. It’s simply not proportionate and not necessary. But in removing the restrictions that we can no longer justify, we must also ask our community not to be complacent. It’s time to start learning to live with COVID, and if we do so responsibly, we can finally begin to regain some of the lost freedoms that COVID has cost us. And that should be cause for celebration.
Looks like a very sensible statement from at least one part of UK (I know, I know, not really)
I think the UK governments really need to start pushing this line - are we really "the most dangerous country in Europe"? I know deaths are a lagging indicator....but:
That chart is misleading too by being on a log scale rather than a linear one.
Furthermore our deaths are so miniscule and our testing and case numbers so massive that there must be an element of 'deaths with[in 28 days of] Covid' rather than 'deaths from Covid' in our numbers.
The figures for the Novavax vaccine look very good. Would be a decent option for the autumn booster, probably - but it might be a good idea to wait for the US trial results to get more safety data.
Have you seen any data on the Vaxxinity/UBI vaccine that has just applied for EUA in Taiwan - also has ongoing trial in India. Would be interested in your thoughts
On the face of it looks good (note the maintained neutralising activity against Delta), but this is only interim PII. Side effect profile also seems promising.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
All that might be true, and yet doesn't it ignore the political lessons of the last five years?
It seems unlikely to me that rational arguments about costs and benefits are suddenly going to come to the fore, rather than the arguments we've had about emotion and identity.
Throw in a bit of Johnsonian truthiness, so that many people will believe Brexit is great, even if it isn't, and defending Brexit looks like a rich electoral seam for the Tories.
Why do I think rationality will come back? To misquote the Manics, Freedom of Trade won't Feed My Children. Yes we still have "would rather eat grass than be in the EEA" nutters like @williamglenn and @Big_G_NorthWales but as the penny slowly drops that there aren't going to be better jobs and more prosperity and in fact there's less than we had and more cost, people will start demanding their promised outcome.
Punters don't really care about the detail of what the EU is. Things were shit, they were told "vote for this and they will not be shit" and yet things are still shit. Sooner or later the excuses will lose traction and "how do we get better off" comes back and the solution of course is closer trade with no barriers.
Burnham is aiming to do a Boris ie Boris stood for Parliament again at the 2015 general election 3 years into his second term as Mayor, so on that basis Burnham would stand for Parliament again in 2023/24.
Of course had Cameron lost in 2015 Boris would then have been a big contender to succeed him rather than having to wait 4 years for the Tory leadership, as Burnham would then be a big contender in 2023/24 for the Labour leadership if Starmer lost
Yes, Burnham needs Starmer to survive, lead into the GE, and lose it handily. It's a likely prospect so although he's quite short for next Lab leader I'm not laying him.
Been to just one meeting that involved Burnham, few years ago. To be honest, was not massively impressed. Seemed a bit light weight. Definitely prefer Starmer, but I wish he would up his game, and continue in the same vein he did at yesterday's pmq's.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
It hurts those who idolise the EU, but this country is moving further away each and every day and any idea the EU would interfere with domestic UK investments just adds to the anti EU narrative
How would Winston Churchill reply to your post?
Life and politics has moved on a million miles from the days of Churchill
Towards the unnecessary arguing and oneupmanship he hoped to prevent when he founded the EU?
Actually I support the EU as a trading organisation, but not a political concept
And yet you keep banging on about our need to having nothing to do with the EEA.
Actually that is not the case
I have said on several occasions the likely final destination for the UK is a close relationship to the single market but remaining outside the EU
However, it also true that the more we sign trade deals and enact our own laws then than that becomes improbable
Genuine question- how do you square that particular circle? If relationship which looks even remotely like EEA is either desirable or just the inevitable landing point, what's the logic behind the attempts at making that difficult by changing rules or signing quick deals?
(Worth remembering that, if future generations want to reverse all of this, it will be perfectly possible for them to do so. After all, if EU membership wasn't permanent, neither can CTPP be...)
The present government is committed to signing trade deals worldwide, including the CP-TPP, and this makes it more difficult to see how a close single market relationship with the EU is possible
It remains to be seen, but it is not impossible to think labour decide to stand at the next GE on a close single market relationship with the EU
And while future governments can reverse everything I just do not see it on the horizon
Inspired by a graph reproduced yesterday showing the three phases of the pandemic in terms of cases (Phase 1: cases not properly counted; serious effect - Phase 2: cases properly counted; serious effect - Phase 3: cases properly counted - low effect), I've done one for cases in England versus hospital occupancy.
I lagged hospital occupancy by 7 days to allow for cases to translate into admissions. There's still some lag, but that's because hospitalisations take time to resolve.
I didn't even scale them, because hospital occupancy runs at a peak about two-thirds of the cases peak in the pre-vaccine era, so they're readily visible on the same scale.
Another SAGE member "speaking in a personal capacity"....
If you're on such a body it does seem you should be very wary of making your own separate pronouncements. Thats part of the price of being on it.
I see the point, but I'm not completely convinced. Scientists, particularly the top ones value 'truth' and the ability to speak their views. If e.g. SAGE membership required not being able to speak out if policy goes against what they believe to be right, then I think some capable scientists would choose not to be a part of it. I might be reluctant - not that I'm asserting that I'm a capable scientist I wouldn't be dashing off to the press, but I'd want to be able to answer truthfully on my opinions if someone asked me. If I wanted to lie for a living I'd go into politics.
It's an advisory group, not a policy making group - I don't think that civil servants or ministers (or even scientists employed by the government) who disagree with the policy should be able to say so publicly while keeping their jobs.
I take the point, but its why I said wary not prohibited. If people are in part seeking their views because they are on SAGE they need to consider if speaking out in a particular way may undermine or distort the understanding of SAGE advice and the potential consequences to that.
They are via such a body performing a public service and such service may result in imposition on them personally and professionally and are they ok with that is the key. I dont think comment of some kind is impossible, but they do need to be more cautious given their positions.
Yep, you're right (and I misread what you meant). And when the evidence is not entirely settled and there's not even a decision as of yet, it would be wise to keep quiet.
As with everything else, there will no doubt be egos at play and some people like to be on the telly etc.
We really don't need people, especially scientists, to keep quiet. Lockdown for ever, open up tomorrow - it should all be out there.
People will then become aware how many and how many conflicting theories and views are out there. Will it help decision-making? Perhaps, perhaps not but I would rather hear peoples' views than not.
I am reminded of the Aesop fable whereby two men disagree over something and suggest getting a third to adjudicate whereby the question is posed why bother - the third person will only end up agreeing with one or the other of the men so we are back where we started.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
All that might be true, and yet doesn't it ignore the political lessons of the last five years?
It seems unlikely to me that rational arguments about costs and benefits are suddenly going to come to the fore, rather than the arguments we've had about emotion and identity.
Throw in a bit of Johnsonian truthiness, so that many people will believe Brexit is great, even if it isn't, and defending Brexit looks like a rich electoral seam for the Tories.
Why do I think rationality will come back? To misquote the Manics, Freedom of Trade won't Feed My Children. Yes we still have "would rather eat grass than be in the EEA" nutters like @williamglenn and @Big_G_NorthWales but as the penny slowly drops that there aren't going to be better jobs and more prosperity and in fact there's less than we had and more cost, people will start demanding their promised outcome.
Punters don't really care about the detail of what the EU is. Things were shit, they were told "vote for this and they will not be shit" and yet things are still shit. Sooner or later the excuses will lose traction and "how do we get better off" comes back and the solution of course is closer trade with no barriers.
Except are things shit?
You keep whinging about how there's full employment and rising wages.
We're getting investment after investment announced.
And all your predictions of doom and collapse have turned into dust, with just squeaky wheels complaining now.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
They're not entirely different things. The EEA is just a vehicle to push EU single market law into neighbouring states.
Laughable stupidity. They are legally separate. Is Norway a member of the EU then?
The only laughable stupidity was voting for Brexit after a campaign to leave the single market, and then complaining that you got what you voted for.
The EEA does not exist independently of the EU. The laws which are transposed to EEA members are made by and voted on by the EU institutions. Leaving the position we had, with a voice in all the EU institutions, in order to join the EEA would have made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
From today there are also things we need to do very differently. And one of the most important is to change our thinking around what cases in the Bailiwick means. We’ve associated it with hospitalisation, with deaths, with the potential for health services to be overwhelmed. We’ve justified what are really very strict and quite extreme travel restrictions because of those risks. But the risk profile has changed with more than 70% of entire population having had at least one dose. The data shows a full vaccination affords 95% protection against needing hospital care. Younger age-groups are significantly less vulnerable and already far less likely to become very ill and need hospital care. No, it’s not completely risk-free, it never will be no matter what we do. But it is a big change compared to the risk we faced before the vaccine. And as we no longer face the same levels of risk, we can no longer justify the same levels of restrictions. It’s simply not proportionate and not necessary. But in removing the restrictions that we can no longer justify, we must also ask our community not to be complacent. It’s time to start learning to live with COVID, and if we do so responsibly, we can finally begin to regain some of the lost freedoms that COVID has cost us. And that should be cause for celebration.
I sincerely hope my niece will be able to visit her mother in Alderney. My sister needs someone to support her.
If she's double jabbed and is coming from the CTA there are no restrictions & no testing.
She is and is. Thought that was the case, but thanks. Bit of luck, and assuming Aurigny are flying, the rest of my sisters children will be able to visit her. Not sure, for other reasons, that I will.
They each would need to complete one of these before travel:
Aurigny is now flying a much increased schedule - from 2 flights a week to Gatwick to several per day. Although ironically the first arrivals on "open borders" day were delayed by fog!
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
I think the SNP do a (mainly) decent job in government, especially considering they're now in their 4th term. I also think that Scottish independence is inevitable and that I will likely vote for it as the Union is unsustainable.
That is very different from me wanting to become a member of or support the SNP. I hope that independent Scotland would retain its general level of civilisation and decency which has been lost south of the wall, but there are other parties who can deliver that.
Thank you for a fair analysis, and hopefully your vote when the day arrives!
There is nothing inevitable about Scottish Independence however much diehard anti Tories like Rochdale may hope there is
It would be insane for both Scotland and the rest of the UK but with Boris as PM it's possible....
He has already cast off Northern Ireland. Protestations about Boris being a unionist have no value when he is delivering anti-union policies. Nor am I obsessed by minutiae poll movements like the Essicks Massiv - this is a long game and the government dilute the arguments for staying every single day.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
Though to be fair, it makes sense on its own merits.
Worth a note that the 670 bn Euro "Recovery Fund" from the EuCo includes a huge amount for "Green Transition".
I wonder where that will be going?
That's barely the start of subsidies for new industries - and they probably make sense. Economies are undergoing a once in a generation change, and if countries don't get their share of the new industries, they risk being locked out for a decade or more. And it's going to be all the more abrupt since importing stuff from China got a whole lot more difficult/expensive.
The fact that China is suffering major wage inflation at a time when transport costs have quadrupled suddenly makes manufacturing within Europe plausible again.
It does, but reviving older industries will be a hard task, as much of the infrastructure which enables them just doesn't exist in a lot of places. Which is why the new stuff is a one-off opportunity.
Note the genesis of the last big transformation, sixty years ago, was funded by government contracts. https://www.eetimes.com/developing-the-first-orbiting-ic/ ...Jack Kilby was a little more than two years removed from inventing the integrated circuit when he was promoted to lead Texas Instruments’ fledgling semiconductor lab. The year was 1961, and the Space Race was heating up. Kilby was working on three high-profile contracts—all were troubled.
Kilby was entrusted with making custom ICs for the Minuteman missile guidance system as well as devices for a U.S. Air Force computer system. The third project was a particularly challenging request from NASA...
...Kilby had previously supplied NASA with TI’s first commercially available chip – the TI SN502 – at a cost of about $450. But NASA needed an alternative that provided more power and speed in the same amount of space.
Kilby’s challenge: design a line of digital logic ICs to replace the SN502, but with 10 times the speed and one-tenth the power consumption. to help.
And NASA wanted it in 10 months.
The IC business was still on shaky ground: early critics noted remarkably low manufacturing yields along with the business challenges posed by the transition to mass production. Nevertheless, Kilby and Patrick Haggerty, one of TI’s co-founders, believed it could be done.
They were right.
“At that time, the majority of our business was defense contracts, and they all wanted smaller and lighter devices,” said Max Post, a TI retiree who was working in the chip maker’s corporate offices at the time...
Since they killed the R35 I think it's fair to say that Nissan no longer make a single car that has any merit or cachet whatsoever. It's a long way down for the company that gave us the Z, the GTR and the S chassis.
Personally, I don't give a flying f*** about 'cachet' in a car. I just want something that will perform the job I want it to do with minimal fuss and cost. Heck, I even drive an automatic ...
I don't particularly like driving; it is a thing that lets me do what I want to do. When I buy a new car, trifling little matters like safety matter more than 0-60.
It's surprising how many of my friends feel the same way (Caterham-7 builders notwithstanding). The car isn't particularly a status symbol; it's a tool.
Going purist for a mo, can you move somewhere different and just not have a car?
Very possible ... plenty of people are unable to drive for medical reasons.
That's actually what we used to do: Mrs J didn't drive, and we'd just move to near she was working. Hence we moved frequently around the country. She learnt to drive, as she felt it was unfair for me to be taxiing her everywhere. But then we bought a house within walking distance of her workplace and had a kid. That company was taken over by a larger one, and she had to commute into Cambridge. Then she moved to another company down in Harlow.
If we'd had to move, we'd have had to move three times - and we like where we live, and the little 'un is settled in school. Besides, we'd have to live in (shudders) Harlow ...
A Cambourne to Harlow trip by public transport is *interesting*.
Excellent.
My memory of growing up in the 80s was that people moved quite frequently for work. It doesn't seem to happen any more - not least because families are typically reliant on two earners, so the ability of earner 1 to get a new job 100 miles away is greatly inhibited by earner 2's need to remain accessible to that individual's own job.
One advantage of London at the time was once you picked the station you wanted to commute into, there was little need to move as you switched job.
In my view, that our big cities have outperformed everywhere else over the last 30 years.
From the perspective of 1985, it wasn't obvious that Manchester, for example, would do any better than Stockton-on-Tees, or Northampton, or Gloucester. Our big cities - even London, but especially Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds, Glasgow and especially Liverpool - were massively unfashionable and a bit of a joke. I remember the hilarity when Glasgow was appointed European City of Culture in 1990.
The eradication of the expectation of a job for life and the normalisation of dual earner families has given places with a critical mass of employment opportunities - where you and your spouse might reasonably hope to find employment opportunities for the rest of your life - a big advantage over small towns with just one or two large employers. The large, good quality employer in a small town - GSK in Barnard Castle, for example - felt normal back in the 80s, but now feels something of an anachronism.
And that world isn't coming back. It used to be that lots of towns had one large employer. Some worked on the factory floor, and others in the technical labs, and some in the manager's corridor. And the ladies made the tea or did the typing. And you grew up in that town, took a job in that factory appropriate to your intelligence and qualifications. You met your life-partner in that town and the cycle continued. Somewhere heaven.
It's not a bad way to structure society- except that if you give young people the chance to cut loose and go somewhere else, they take it. And then they meet someone else from somewhere else, and then there's no reason for them to return to their home town.
Hence small-medium towns get left behind. If they're in the right place, they become commuter hubs for cities. If not, you get the sort of human sadness that we see in Red Wall documentaries.
But there's still no going back. Partly because business has changed, but mostly because people don't want to be tied down like that.
Covid infections are rising in Europe and a decline in cases over the past 10 weeks has come to an end, the World Health Organization says.
WHO Europe head Hans Kluge has warned of a "new wave in the WHO European region unless we remain disciplined", citing the spread of the Delta variant and an increase in mixing, travel and easing of restrictions.
My area has been exempt from the rise in the rest of Spain - until today when cases have doubled. It's being driven by holidaymakers and the young. With well under 40% of 65-70 year olds double jabbed it's gonna be a scary month for me until i get my AZT 2 shot!
Finalising a parcel contract with DHL. They have a fascinating zonal map arrangement up here. Depots in Perth and Aberdeen, so if you're delivering to say Brechin its a 40 mile trip.
From Aberdeen the "Highlands and Islands" zone starts on the Western Peripheral, so to deliver 9 miles from the Aberdeen depot into Westhill or the other commuter towns on the edges of the city costs 2.5x times more for a 75% shorter trip.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
All that might be true, and yet doesn't it ignore the political lessons of the last five years?
It seems unlikely to me that rational arguments about costs and benefits are suddenly going to come to the fore, rather than the arguments we've had about emotion and identity.
Throw in a bit of Johnsonian truthiness, so that many people will believe Brexit is great, even if it isn't, and defending Brexit looks like a rich electoral seam for the Tories.
Why do I think rationality will come back? To misquote the Manics, Freedom of Trade won't Feed My Children. Yes we still have "would rather eat grass than be in the EEA" nutters like @williamglenn and @Big_G_NorthWales but as the penny slowly drops that there aren't going to be better jobs and more prosperity and in fact there's less than we had and more cost, people will start demanding their promised outcome.
Punters don't really care about the detail of what the EU is. Things were shit, they were told "vote for this and they will not be shit" and yet things are still shit. Sooner or later the excuses will lose traction and "how do we get better off" comes back and the solution of course is closer trade with no barriers.
I think people will want to go forwards, rather than back. The question will be, "Who is responsible for wrecking Brexit?" and not, "Why did we make this terrible mistake? Can anyone make it stop?"
The answer to the first question will be, of course, the EU and the traitor Remoaners. Expect to see the dial on nationalism turned up even higher.
By the way, I hope you're taking notes. This is exactly how Scottish Independence will play out too.
Lol some wanker from the WHO wants vaccinated populations to keep social distancing and masks. Fuck off mate.
Loads of pro vax bods are all keep masking and so on and so forth, all the antivaxxers are anti-lockdown.
The UK is in a great middle ground of being massively in favour of vaccination and against restrictions (The polling on restrictions WILL switch once they're dropped - huge tendency toward thje status quo in polls on lockdown to my eyes.)
Inspired by a graph reproduced yesterday showing the three phases of the pandemic in terms of cases (Phase 1: cases not properly counted; serious effect - Phase 2: cases properly counted; serious effect - Phase 3: cases properly counted - low effect), I've done one for cases in England versus hospital occupancy.
I lagged hospital occupancy by 7 days to allow for cases to translate into admissions. There's still some lag, but that's because hospitalisations take time to resolve.
I didn't even scale them, because hospital occupancy runs at a peak about two-thirds of the cases peak in the pre-vaccine era, so they're readily visible on the same scale.
Great stuff, just eyeballing it it looks like admissions are about a third for the same number of cases in the second wave.
From today there are also things we need to do very differently. And one of the most important is to change our thinking around what cases in the Bailiwick means. We’ve associated it with hospitalisation, with deaths, with the potential for health services to be overwhelmed. We’ve justified what are really very strict and quite extreme travel restrictions because of those risks. But the risk profile has changed with more than 70% of entire population having had at least one dose. The data shows a full vaccination affords 95% protection against needing hospital care. Younger age-groups are significantly less vulnerable and already far less likely to become very ill and need hospital care. No, it’s not completely risk-free, it never will be no matter what we do. But it is a big change compared to the risk we faced before the vaccine. And as we no longer face the same levels of risk, we can no longer justify the same levels of restrictions. It’s simply not proportionate and not necessary. But in removing the restrictions that we can no longer justify, we must also ask our community not to be complacent. It’s time to start learning to live with COVID, and if we do so responsibly, we can finally begin to regain some of the lost freedoms that COVID has cost us. And that should be cause for celebration.
I sincerely hope my niece will be able to visit her mother in Alderney. My sister needs someone to support her.
If she's double jabbed and is coming from the CTA there are no restrictions & no testing.
She is and is. Thought that was the case, but thanks. Bit of luck, and assuming Aurigny are flying, the rest of my sisters children will be able to visit her. Not sure, for other reasons, that I will.
They each would need to complete one of these before travel:
Aurigny is now flying a much increased schedule - from 2 flights a week to Gatwick to several per day. Although ironically the first arrivals on "open borders" day were delayed by fog!
Thanks again. Gatwick now, I see; used only to be Southampton.
And disruptions due to weather were common when I was going to Alderney quite often.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
They're not entirely different things. The EEA is just a vehicle to push EU single market law into neighbouring states.
Laughable stupidity. They are legally separate. Is Norway a member of the EU then?
The only laughable stupidity was voting for Brexit after a campaign to leave the single market, and then complaining that you got what you voted for.
The EEA does not exist independently of the EU. The laws which are transposed to EEA members are made by and voted on by the EU institutions. Leaving the position we had, with a voice in all the EU institutions, in order to join the EEA would have made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Ah, how are those letters to the Corinthians going?
And that world isn't coming back. It used to be that lots of towns had one large employer. Some worked on the factory floor, and others in the technical labs, and some in the manager's corridor. And the ladies made the tea or did the typing. And you grew up in that town, took a job in that factory appropriate to your intelligence and qualifications. You met your life-partner in that town and the cycle continued. Somewhere heaven.
30 years ago Ferranti had half a dozen manufacturing plants in Edinburgh, a diversified portfolio, they hired graduates and apprentices, they had a training facility and employed disabled workers.
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
I think the SNP do a (mainly) decent job in government, especially considering they're now in their 4th term. I also think that Scottish independence is inevitable and that I will likely vote for it as the Union is unsustainable.
That is very different from me wanting to become a member of or support the SNP. I hope that independent Scotland would retain its general level of civilisation and decency which has been lost south of the wall, but there are other parties who can deliver that.
Thank you for a fair analysis, and hopefully your vote when the day arrives!
There is nothing inevitable about Scottish Independence however much diehard anti Tories like Rochdale may hope there is
Lol some wanker from the WHO wants vaccinated populations to keep social distancing and masks. Fuck off mate.
Saw a gleeful tweet from a former associate this morning saying he was happy to be "double masked and double vaxxed" on the Tube with the hashtag #zerocovid.
Needless to say his entire feed is retweets of Pagel and other indy SAGE members and he's been calling for restrictions to be tightened for a few weeks now.
Some people just want us to live like this forever and to hell with the consequences. I saw my grandmother for the first time in 18 months at the weekend and she's noticeably less mobile from not being able to get out and about just to do the shopping. It was quite upsetting to see.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
It hurts those who idolise the EU, but this country is moving further away each and every day and any idea the EU would interfere with domestic UK investments just adds to the anti EU narrative
How would Winston Churchill reply to your post?
Life and politics has moved on a million miles from the days of Churchill
Towards the unnecessary arguing and oneupmanship he hoped to prevent when he founded the EU?
Actually I support the EU as a trading organisation, but not a political concept
And yet you keep banging on about our need to having nothing to do with the EEA.
Actually that is not the case
I have said on several occasions the likely final destination for the UK is a close relationship to the single market but remaining outside the EU
However, it also true that the more we sign trade deals and enact our own laws then than that becomes improbable
Genuine question- how do you square that particular circle? If relationship which looks even remotely like EEA is either desirable or just the inevitable landing point, what's the logic behind the attempts at making that difficult by changing rules or signing quick deals?
(Worth remembering that, if future generations want to reverse all of this, it will be perfectly possible for them to do so. After all, if EU membership wasn't permanent, neither can CTPP be...)
The present government is committed to signing trade deals worldwide, including the CP-TPP, and this makes it more difficult to see how a close single market relationship with the EU is possible
It remains to be seen, but it is not impossible to think labour decide to stand at the next GE on a close single market relationship with the EU
And while future governments can reverse everything I just do not see it on the horizon
A starter for 10 whilst negotiating trade deals is of course to be seen to be honouring the other deals we have. That Biden had to sit liar down at the G7 and explain to him - with crayons - what would happen if he breaks the deal he himself signed only months before was embarrassing for the country.
Currently you cannot negotiate with the UK government in good faith. So we won't be getting any kind of preferential trade deal on the kind of scale that we need whilst crayon drawings are needed.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
All that might be true, and yet doesn't it ignore the political lessons of the last five years?
It seems unlikely to me that rational arguments about costs and benefits are suddenly going to come to the fore, rather than the arguments we've had about emotion and identity.
Throw in a bit of Johnsonian truthiness, so that many people will believe Brexit is great, even if it isn't, and defending Brexit looks like a rich electoral seam for the Tories.
Why do I think rationality will come back? To misquote the Manics, Freedom of Trade won't Feed My Children. Yes we still have "would rather eat grass than be in the EEA" nutters like @williamglenn and @Big_G_NorthWales but as the penny slowly drops that there aren't going to be better jobs and more prosperity and in fact there's less than we had and more cost, people will start demanding their promised outcome.
Punters don't really care about the detail of what the EU is. Things were shit, they were told "vote for this and they will not be shit" and yet things are still shit. Sooner or later the excuses will lose traction and "how do we get better off" comes back and the solution of course is closer trade with no barriers.
You may disagree with @Williamglenn and myself but you do yourself no favours by calling us 'nutters'
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
Or the SNP will become like the ANC in South Africa. The victors of independence not working for their people, but getting voted in continuously anyway ...
What happens to the SNP if it doesn’t achieve independence? Seems an alternative and interesting question
They are like the Earl of Bruce’s spider
Indeed. We’ll try, try and try again, until we win.
Scots only need to win once. The BritNats need to win every time. This is only going to end one way.
(Charles, at the time of the spider story he was already king.)
No you will not because the UK government will not allow you to.
2014 was a once in a generation vote and you will not get another until a generation has elapsed since then if ever.
Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998 anyway
Another SAGE member "speaking in a personal capacity"....
If you're on such a body it does seem you should be very wary of making your own separate pronouncements. Thats part of the price of being on it.
I see the point, but I'm not completely convinced. Scientists, particularly the top ones value 'truth' and the ability to speak their views. If e.g. SAGE membership required not being able to speak out if policy goes against what they believe to be right, then I think some capable scientists would choose not to be a part of it. I might be reluctant - not that I'm asserting that I'm a capable scientist I wouldn't be dashing off to the press, but I'd want to be able to answer truthfully on my opinions if someone asked me. If I wanted to lie for a living I'd go into politics.
It's an advisory group, not a policy making group - I don't think that civil servants or ministers (or even scientists employed by the government) who disagree with the policy should be able to say so publicly while keeping their jobs.
I take the point, but its why I said wary not prohibited. If people are in part seeking their views because they are on SAGE they need to consider if speaking out in a particular way may undermine or distort the understanding of SAGE advice and the potential consequences to that.
They are via such a body performing a public service and such service may result in imposition on them personally and professionally and are they ok with that is the key. I dont think comment of some kind is impossible, but they do need to be more cautious given their positions.
Yep, you're right (and I misread what you meant). And when the evidence is not entirely settled and there's not even a decision as of yet, it would be wise to keep quiet.
As with everything else, there will no doubt be egos at play and some people like to be on the telly etc.
We really don't need people, especially scientists, to keep quiet. Lockdown for ever, open up tomorrow - it should all be out there.
People will then become aware how many and how many conflicting theories and views are out there. Will it help decision-making? Perhaps, perhaps not but I would rather hear peoples' views than not.
I am reminded of the Aesop fable whereby two men disagree over something and suggest getting a third to adjudicate whereby the question is posed why bother - the third person will only end up agreeing with one or the other of the men so we are back where we started.
To adapt the old jewish joke, if two scientists have a disagreement and ask the opinion of a third, there are now (at least) three disagreements
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
All that might be true, and yet doesn't it ignore the political lessons of the last five years?
It seems unlikely to me that rational arguments about costs and benefits are suddenly going to come to the fore, rather than the arguments we've had about emotion and identity.
Throw in a bit of Johnsonian truthiness, so that many people will believe Brexit is great, even if it isn't, and defending Brexit looks like a rich electoral seam for the Tories.
Why do I think rationality will come back? To misquote the Manics, Freedom of Trade won't Feed My Children. Yes we still have "would rather eat grass than be in the EEA" nutters like @williamglenn and @Big_G_NorthWales but as the penny slowly drops that there aren't going to be better jobs and more prosperity and in fact there's less than we had and more cost, people will start demanding their promised outcome.
Punters don't really care about the detail of what the EU is. Things were shit, they were told "vote for this and they will not be shit" and yet things are still shit. Sooner or later the excuses will lose traction and "how do we get better off" comes back and the solution of course is closer trade with no barriers.
Except are things shit?
You keep whinging about how there's full employment and rising wages.
We're getting investment after investment announced.
And all your predictions of doom and collapse have turned into dust, with just squeaky wheels complaining now.
I do think that we live in different realities old love. Go ask people in the rust belt if things aren't shit still. They are being promised stuff that will definitely help at some point in the future, but until it starts to appear they're say in the same hell they were before. Flag twattery may buck them up briefly but can't keep doing that over and over.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
This is the issue, wanting a "settled" end point. Life should never be "settled", evolution is how we progress. To be settled is to go stale, to be unresponsive, to be sclerotic.
The UK as a nimble independent nation should be ever evolving. Adjusting to changing technologies, adjusting to changing opportunities. Not settled.
The Swiss have this right, they are constantly updating their relations with the EU and others in a way that suits them best. Its never settled. The EU hate it and want them nailed down, but it works for the Swiss and will work for us too.
Why the heck would we throw away our agility to be locked down and settled?
Lol some wanker from the WHO wants vaccinated populations to keep social distancing and masks. Fuck off mate.
Saw a gleeful tweet from a former associate this morning saying he was happy to be "double masked and double vaxxed" on the Tube with the hashtag #zerocovid.
Needless to say his entire feed is retweets of Pagel and other indy SAGE members and he's been calling for restrictions to be tightened for a few weeks now.
Some people just want us to live like this forever and to hell with the consequences. I saw my grandmother for the first time in 18 months at the weekend and she's noticeably less mobile from not being able to get out and about just to do the shopping. It was quite upsetting to see.
Pagel new shifting of the goal posts is can't open up until we have jabbed all the kids. Rising cases, long covid, variants, yadda yadda yadda.
Boris has made clear he will refuse a legal indyref2 while he is PM anyway
BoZo made clear there would be no border in the Irish Sea.
The only other alternative was No Deal and a hard border in Ireland which would have seen greater demand for Irish Unity than there is now or a continuation of the May Deal which would have meant no Tory majority in 2019.
Boris does not want to be the 21st century Lord North who lost Scotland so will continue to refuse indyref2 as long as he is in power and nothing the Nats can do about it
Inspired by a graph reproduced yesterday showing the three phases of the pandemic in terms of cases (Phase 1: cases not properly counted; serious effect - Phase 2: cases properly counted; serious effect - Phase 3: cases properly counted - low effect), I've done one for cases in England versus hospital occupancy.
I lagged hospital occupancy by 7 days to allow for cases to translate into admissions. There's still some lag, but that's because hospitalisations take time to resolve.
I didn't even scale them, because hospital occupancy runs at a peak about two-thirds of the cases peak in the pre-vaccine era, so they're readily visible on the same scale.
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
I think the SNP do a (mainly) decent job in government, especially considering they're now in their 4th term. I also think that Scottish independence is inevitable and that I will likely vote for it as the Union is unsustainable.
That is very different from me wanting to become a member of or support the SNP. I hope that independent Scotland would retain its general level of civilisation and decency which has been lost south of the wall, but there are other parties who can deliver that.
Thank you for a fair analysis, and hopefully your vote when the day arrives!
There is nothing inevitable about Scottish Independence however much diehard anti Tories like Rochdale may hope there is
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
It hurts those who idolise the EU, but this country is moving further away each and every day and any idea the EU would interfere with domestic UK investments just adds to the anti EU narrative
How would Winston Churchill reply to your post?
Life and politics has moved on a million miles from the days of Churchill
Towards the unnecessary arguing and oneupmanship he hoped to prevent when he founded the EU?
Actually I support the EU as a trading organisation, but not a political concept
And yet you keep banging on about our need to having nothing to do with the EEA.
Actually that is not the case
I have said on several occasions the likely final destination for the UK is a close relationship to the single market but remaining outside the EU
However, it also true that the more we sign trade deals and enact our own laws then than that becomes improbable
Genuine question- how do you square that particular circle? If relationship which looks even remotely like EEA is either desirable or just the inevitable landing point, what's the logic behind the attempts at making that difficult by changing rules or signing quick deals?
(Worth remembering that, if future generations want to reverse all of this, it will be perfectly possible for them to do so. After all, if EU membership wasn't permanent, neither can CTPP be...)
The present government is committed to signing trade deals worldwide, including the CP-TPP, and this makes it more difficult to see how a close single market relationship with the EU is possible
It remains to be seen, but it is not impossible to think labour decide to stand at the next GE on a close single market relationship with the EU
And while future governments can reverse everything I just do not see it on the horizon
A starter for 10 whilst negotiating trade deals is of course to be seen to be honouring the other deals we have. That Biden had to sit liar down at the G7 and explain to him - with crayons - what would happen if he breaks the deal he himself signed only months before was embarrassing for the country.
Currently you cannot negotiate with the UK government in good faith. So we won't be getting any kind of preferential trade deal on the kind of scale that we need whilst crayon drawings are needed.
And so you whinge and yet we have a deal with Australia that the EU don't have, and other agreements being negotiated. Accession talks for the CPTPP have formally began.
Looks like you're the one who needs crayons. Try taking them out of your nose and stop saying "wibble".
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
This is the issue, wanting a "settled" end point. Life should never be "settled", evolution is how we progress. To be settled is to go stale, to be unresponsive, to be sclerotic.
The UK as a nimble independent nation should be ever evolving. Adjusting to changing technologies, adjusting to changing opportunities. Not settled.
The Swiss have this right, they are constantly updating their relations with the EU and others in a way that suits them best. Its never settled. The EU hate it and want them nailed down, but it works for the Swiss and will work for us too.
Why the heck would we throw away our agility to be locked down and settled?
How agile are you at the moment Philip? Set up that business yet? Got a job?
NEW: Indonesia reports 24,836 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase so far, and a record 504 new deaths
It's the next India - Delta is in there and vaccination rates are low - although they have started vaccinating 12-17 year olds. Friends there recently lost a 40yo diabetic Doctor who had refused the jab - and health workers were the first to be vaccinated. They've just announced a "mini-lockdown" for 3 weeks and insist on negative COVID test plus proof of vaccination on flights and long distance trains/buses/ferries.
Is the UK the first country to announce "third jabs"?
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
All that might be true, and yet doesn't it ignore the political lessons of the last five years?
It seems unlikely to me that rational arguments about costs and benefits are suddenly going to come to the fore, rather than the arguments we've had about emotion and identity.
Throw in a bit of Johnsonian truthiness, so that many people will believe Brexit is great, even if it isn't, and defending Brexit looks like a rich electoral seam for the Tories.
Why do I think rationality will come back? To misquote the Manics, Freedom of Trade won't Feed My Children. Yes we still have "would rather eat grass than be in the EEA" nutters like @williamglenn and @Big_G_NorthWales but as the penny slowly drops that there aren't going to be better jobs and more prosperity and in fact there's less than we had and more cost, people will start demanding their promised outcome.
Punters don't really care about the detail of what the EU is. Things were shit, they were told "vote for this and they will not be shit" and yet things are still shit. Sooner or later the excuses will lose traction and "how do we get better off" comes back and the solution of course is closer trade with no barriers.
I wouldn’t care to predict what the future holds (who could have predicted the last 11 years?). But at the economic level, the benefits/dis benefits of being part of the Single Market are pretty marginal.
And from the POV of Red Wall voters, labour shortages are a pretty good thing.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
All that might be true, and yet doesn't it ignore the political lessons of the last five years?
It seems unlikely to me that rational arguments about costs and benefits are suddenly going to come to the fore, rather than the arguments we've had about emotion and identity.
Throw in a bit of Johnsonian truthiness, so that many people will believe Brexit is great, even if it isn't, and defending Brexit looks like a rich electoral seam for the Tories.
Why do I think rationality will come back? To misquote the Manics, Freedom of Trade won't Feed My Children. Yes we still have "would rather eat grass than be in the EEA" nutters like @williamglenn and @Big_G_NorthWales but as the penny slowly drops that there aren't going to be better jobs and more prosperity and in fact there's less than we had and more cost, people will start demanding their promised outcome.
Punters don't really care about the detail of what the EU is. Things were shit, they were told "vote for this and they will not be shit" and yet things are still shit. Sooner or later the excuses will lose traction and "how do we get better off" comes back and the solution of course is closer trade with no barriers.
I think people will want to go forwards, rather than back. The question will be, "Who is responsible for wrecking Brexit?" and not, "Why did we make this terrible mistake? Can anyone make it stop?"
The answer to the first question will be, of course, the EU and the traitor Remoaners. Expect to see the dial on nationalism turned up even higher.
By the way, I hope you're taking notes. This is exactly how Scottish Independence will play out too.
Your argument only applies to parts of the UK of course as NI is no longer attached to GB from a trading or customs perspective. So lets just talk about all of this as the attitude and approach of England and the English as thats what it is.
Don't write off the "terrible mistake" idea just yet - people are getting broken off the "isn't this brilliant" group over time. I have no thought that England will want back into the EU, but I do expect that a rebranding will be done of the status quo.
Despite all the huff and puff we remain aligned with EEA standards and practices. Despite the absurd barriers we insisted be erected and then failed to actually implement, a sausage in GB is still absolutely compliant with EEA sausage standards and will continue to be so.
Call it the "Boris Banger Buster deal" or whatever. Just remove the barriers to trade so that we can all get on with our lives. Its a radical idea - as our standards are their standards, lets make it economically viable to send products from GB to NI again.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
This is the issue, wanting a "settled" end point. Life should never be "settled", evolution is how we progress. To be settled is to go stale, to be unresponsive, to be sclerotic.
The UK as a nimble independent nation should be ever evolving. Adjusting to changing technologies, adjusting to changing opportunities. Not settled.
The Swiss have this right, they are constantly updating their relations with the EU and others in a way that suits them best. Its never settled. The EU hate it and want them nailed down, but it works for the Swiss and will work for us too.
Why the heck would we throw away our agility to be locked down and settled?
How agile are you at the moment Philip? Set up that business yet? Got a job?
Yes and yes. 🤦♂️
I don't work 9-5, I work all sorts of hours, which is why I have time to post here in the daytime. As much as you're obsessed with what I do for some strange reason.
NEW: Indonesia reports 24,836 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase so far, and a record 504 new deaths
It's the next India - Delta is in there and vaccination rates are low - although they have started vaccinating 12-17 year olds. Friends there recently lost a 40yo diabetic Doctor who had refused the jab - and health workers were the first to be vaccinated. They've just announced a "mini-lockdown" for 3 weeks and insist on negative COVID test plus proof of vaccination on flights and long distance trains/buses/ferries.
Is the UK the first country to announce "third jabs"?
Russia have.....no not joking....they really have announced booster jabs. The fact bugger all people have even had one jab, irrelevant.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
This is the issue, wanting a "settled" end point. Life should never be "settled", evolution is how we progress. To be settled is to go stale, to be unresponsive, to be sclerotic.
The UK as a nimble independent nation should be ever evolving. Adjusting to changing technologies, adjusting to changing opportunities. Not settled.
The Swiss have this right, they are constantly updating their relations with the EU and others in a way that suits them best. Its never settled. The EU hate it and want them nailed down, but it works for the Swiss and will work for us too.
Why the heck would we throw away our agility to be locked down and settled?
How agile are you at the moment Philip? Set up that business yet? Got a job?
Yes and yes. 🤦♂️
I don't work 9-5, I work all sorts of hours, which is why I have time to post here in the daytime. As much as you're obsessed with what I do for some strange reason.
Don't let them pin you down! You are the Wizard of Wazza! The global expert on every subject!
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
Or the SNP will become like the ANC in South Africa. The victors of independence not working for their people, but getting voted in continuously anyway ...
What happens to the SNP if it doesn’t achieve independence? Seems an alternative and interesting question
So far the answer is that remains domestically dominant controlling the Scottish Parliament and most local authorities. It is very hard to see this changing in the medium term.
Labour is almost dead in Scotland and bereft of talent. The generation of Labour placemen in our public sector appointments are now retiring or retired and they are not being replaced. It is hard to see where new growth comes from.
The Tories are probably pretty close to their peak. I can just about imagine them gaining control, briefly, of the likes of Edinburgh or Aberdeen but there are clear caps on their support and they are bumping against them. Ruth seemed to offer the opportunity to expand the potential base but with her out the picture this seems unlikely.
The Lib Dems are in an even worse state. I think that it is more likely that they will be replaced as to 4th party by the Greens at every level, just as they already are in Holyrood.
So the SNP dominate by default. They might split of course but the complete failure of Alba is a warning to those politicians who are in this for a career and the SNP has plenty of them.
A surprisingly fair assessment, if we overlook the snide final line.
According to your analysis, the future is very bleak for the 3 Scottish Unionist parties. So, the only thing keeping Scotland in the Union is threats and bribes from London. What a sound basis for a “voluntary” union of equals.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
All that might be true, and yet doesn't it ignore the political lessons of the last five years?
It seems unlikely to me that rational arguments about costs and benefits are suddenly going to come to the fore, rather than the arguments we've had about emotion and identity.
Throw in a bit of Johnsonian truthiness, so that many people will believe Brexit is great, even if it isn't, and defending Brexit looks like a rich electoral seam for the Tories.
Why do I think rationality will come back? To misquote the Manics, Freedom of Trade won't Feed My Children. Yes we still have "would rather eat grass than be in the EEA" nutters like @williamglenn and @Big_G_NorthWales but as the penny slowly drops that there aren't going to be better jobs and more prosperity and in fact there's less than we had and more cost, people will start demanding their promised outcome.
Punters don't really care about the detail of what the EU is. Things were shit, they were told "vote for this and they will not be shit" and yet things are still shit. Sooner or later the excuses will lose traction and "how do we get better off" comes back and the solution of course is closer trade with no barriers.
I think people will want to go forwards, rather than back. The question will be, "Who is responsible for wrecking Brexit?" and not, "Why did we make this terrible mistake? Can anyone make it stop?"
The answer to the first question will be, of course, the EU and the traitor Remoaners. Expect to see the dial on nationalism turned up even higher.
By the way, I hope you're taking notes. This is exactly how Scottish Independence will play out too.
Your argument only applies to parts of the UK of course as NI is no longer attached to GB from a trading or customs perspective. So lets just talk about all of this as the attitude and approach of England and the English as thats what it is.
Don't write off the "terrible mistake" idea just yet - people are getting broken off the "isn't this brilliant" group over time. I have no thought that England will want back into the EU, but I do expect that a rebranding will be done of the status quo.
Despite all the huff and puff we remain aligned with EEA standards and practices. Despite the absurd barriers we insisted be erected and then failed to actually implement, a sausage in GB is still absolutely compliant with EEA sausage standards and will continue to be so.
Call it the "Boris Banger Buster deal" or whatever. Just remove the barriers to trade so that we can all get on with our lives. Its a radical idea - as our standards are their standards, lets make it economically viable to send products from GB to NI again.
This may be news to you but most people probably don't care about NI.
NI don't help themselves by electing people like the DUP and Sinn Fein, why should we?
From today there are also things we need to do very differently. And one of the most important is to change our thinking around what cases in the Bailiwick means. We’ve associated it with hospitalisation, with deaths, with the potential for health services to be overwhelmed. We’ve justified what are really very strict and quite extreme travel restrictions because of those risks. But the risk profile has changed with more than 70% of entire population having had at least one dose. The data shows a full vaccination affords 95% protection against needing hospital care. Younger age-groups are significantly less vulnerable and already far less likely to become very ill and need hospital care. No, it’s not completely risk-free, it never will be no matter what we do. But it is a big change compared to the risk we faced before the vaccine. And as we no longer face the same levels of risk, we can no longer justify the same levels of restrictions. It’s simply not proportionate and not necessary. But in removing the restrictions that we can no longer justify, we must also ask our community not to be complacent. It’s time to start learning to live with COVID, and if we do so responsibly, we can finally begin to regain some of the lost freedoms that COVID has cost us. And that should be cause for celebration.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
This is the issue, wanting a "settled" end point. Life should never be "settled", evolution is how we progress. To be settled is to go stale, to be unresponsive, to be sclerotic.
The UK as a nimble independent nation should be ever evolving. Adjusting to changing technologies, adjusting to changing opportunities. Not settled.
The Swiss have this right, they are constantly updating their relations with the EU and others in a way that suits them best. Its never settled. The EU hate it and want them nailed down, but it works for the Swiss and will work for us too.
Why the heck would we throw away our agility to be locked down and settled?
How agile are you at the moment Philip? Set up that business yet? Got a job?
Yes and yes. 🤦♂️
I don't work 9-5, I work all sorts of hours, which is why I have time to post here in the daytime. As much as you're obsessed with what I do for some strange reason.
Not obsessed, just amused. At one stage you were on here every time I came on, and you still are most days. Have you combined? Got a job as Boris Johnson's personal representative on PB? Can't imagine it pays that well and there can't have been too many applicants, but well done anyway.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
They're not entirely different things. The EEA is just a vehicle to push EU single market law into neighbouring states.
Laughable stupidity. They are legally separate. Is Norway a member of the EU then?
The only laughable stupidity was voting for Brexit after a campaign to leave the single market, and then complaining that you got what you voted for.
The EEA does not exist independently of the EU. The laws which are transposed to EEA members are made by and voted on by the EU institutions. Leaving the position we had, with a voice in all the EU institutions, in order to join the EEA would have made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
"There is a free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey that all European nations have access to … after we vote to leave we will remain in this zone."
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
They're not entirely different things. The EEA is just a vehicle to push EU single market law into neighbouring states.
Laughable stupidity. They are legally separate. Is Norway a member of the EU then?
The only laughable stupidity was voting for Brexit after a campaign to leave the single market, and then complaining that you got what you voted for.
The EEA does not exist independently of the EU. The laws which are transposed to EEA members are made by and voted on by the EU institutions. Leaving the position we had, with a voice in all the EU institutions, in order to join the EEA would have made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
"There is a free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey that all European nations have access to … after we vote to leave we will remain in this zone."
Vote Leave, 2016.
We are still in that zone. Just like Turkey we have a trade agreement.
It is traditionally, just as growing up in Kingston upon Thames we considered ourselves to be from Surrey.
Indeed it is, and having lived in both, and played cricket in both Essex and Surrey leagues respectively, not in the same London league - cricketing counties are the real thing.
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
It hurts those who idolise the EU, but this country is moving further away each and every day and any idea the EU would interfere with domestic UK investments just adds to the anti EU narrative
How would Winston Churchill reply to your post?
Life and politics has moved on a million miles from the days of Churchill
Towards the unnecessary arguing and oneupmanship he hoped to prevent when he founded the EU?
Actually I support the EU as a trading organisation, but not a political concept
And yet you keep banging on about our need to having nothing to do with the EEA.
Actually that is not the case
I have said on several occasions the likely final destination for the UK is a close relationship to the single market but remaining outside the EU
However, it also true that the more we sign trade deals and enact our own laws then than that becomes improbable
Genuine question- how do you square that particular circle? If relationship which looks even remotely like EEA is either desirable or just the inevitable landing point, what's the logic behind the attempts at making that difficult by changing rules or signing quick deals?
(Worth remembering that, if future generations want to reverse all of this, it will be perfectly possible for them to do so. After all, if EU membership wasn't permanent, neither can CTPP be...)
The present government is committed to signing trade deals worldwide, including the CP-TPP, and this makes it more difficult to see how a close single market relationship with the EU is possible
It remains to be seen, but it is not impossible to think labour decide to stand at the next GE on a close single market relationship with the EU
And while future governments can reverse everything I just do not see it on the horizon
A starter for 10 whilst negotiating trade deals is of course to be seen to be honouring the other deals we have. That Biden had to sit liar down at the G7 and explain to him - with crayons - what would happen if he breaks the deal he himself signed only months before was embarrassing for the country.
Currently you cannot negotiate with the UK government in good faith. So we won't be getting any kind of preferential trade deal on the kind of scale that we need whilst crayon drawings are needed.
And so you whinge and yet we have a deal with Australia that the EU don't have, and other agreements being negotiated. Accession talks for the CPTPP have formally began.
Looks like you're the one who needs crayons. Try taking them out of your nose and stop saying "wibble".
To be fair you have a point about Australia. If we surrender and agree a deal that is entirely to their benefit people might sign deals with us. Especially if we tell ourselves that its so brilliant that it can't fully come into effect for 15 years. No real risk on their part signing Australia up for that.
A deal that doesn't represent a fraction of 1% of what we've given up that is on terms preferential to us? That's where the crayons come in. I think someone gave a set to Lord Frost as he's been able to realise for the first time that for some reason the EU had a set of red lines that they stuck to and the bad man in Brussels refused to do what we told them to do.
Finalising a parcel contract with DHL. They have a fascinating zonal map arrangement up here. Depots in Perth and Aberdeen, so if you're delivering to say Brechin its a 40 mile trip.
From Aberdeen the "Highlands and Islands" zone starts on the Western Peripheral, so to deliver 9 miles from the Aberdeen depot into Westhill or the other commuter towns on the edges of the city costs 2.5x times more for a 75% shorter trip.
Have they looked at a map?
Is the clue in the name Highlands and Islands which iirc from the days of Charles Kennedy has a population of about 30 spread over thousands of square miles necessitating occasional trips by sea on a calm day?
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
Or the SNP will become like the ANC in South Africa. The victors of independence not working for their people, but getting voted in continuously anyway ...
What happens to the SNP if it doesn’t achieve independence? Seems an alternative and interesting question
They are like the Earl of Bruce’s spider
Indeed. We’ll try, try and try again, until we win.
Scots only need to win once. The BritNats need to win every time. This is only going to end one way.
(Charles, at the time of the spider story he was already king.)
No you will not because the UK government will not allow you to.
2014 was a once in a generation vote and you will not get another until a generation has elapsed since then if ever.
Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998 anyway
*Your* UK government will (foolishly) not allow Scots to express their free will at the ballot box. Another UK government will.
Call it the "Boris Banger Buster deal" or whatever. Just remove the barriers to trade so that we can all get on with our lives. Its a radical idea - as our standards are their standards, lets make it economically viable to send products from GB to NI again.
When you put it like that, it shows how disingenuous it is for an organisation that claims the Good Friday Agreement is paramount to insist that sausages from an equivalent regulatory regime are a threat so grave that they justify barriers that disturb the balance.
NEW: Latest @IpsosMORI data out today shows that just 6 in 10 Labour voters from 2019 believe that a Labour government led by Keir Starmer would do a better job running the country than the current government led by Boris Johnson
"The channel needs an average daily audience of 139,000 to attract the advertising spend needed to break even on annual costs of £25m, according to Enders Analysis."
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
They're not entirely different things. The EEA is just a vehicle to push EU single market law into neighbouring states.
Laughable stupidity. They are legally separate. Is Norway a member of the EU then?
The only laughable stupidity was voting for Brexit after a campaign to leave the single market, and then complaining that you got what you voted for.
The EEA does not exist independently of the EU. The laws which are transposed to EEA members are made by and voted on by the EU institutions. Leaving the position we had, with a voice in all the EU institutions, in order to join the EEA would have made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
"There is a free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey that all European nations have access to … after we vote to leave we will remain in this zone."
Vote Leave, 2016.
Perhaps that is why williamglenn (aka St Paul) voted Remain, because he knew, like many of the rest of us, that was all a lie.
The reason Curtice says “the Indy argument is cooling” is precisely because of brexit. It is never ending, complex, full of contradictions and it is playing out in front of everyone.
How the SNP argues the same doesn’t happen with Indy (on a larger scale) is one for them to answer.
From today there are also things we need to do very differently. And one of the most important is to change our thinking around what cases in the Bailiwick means. We’ve associated it with hospitalisation, with deaths, with the potential for health services to be overwhelmed. We’ve justified what are really very strict and quite extreme travel restrictions because of those risks. But the risk profile has changed with more than 70% of entire population having had at least one dose. The data shows a full vaccination affords 95% protection against needing hospital care. Younger age-groups are significantly less vulnerable and already far less likely to become very ill and need hospital care. No, it’s not completely risk-free, it never will be no matter what we do. But it is a big change compared to the risk we faced before the vaccine. And as we no longer face the same levels of risk, we can no longer justify the same levels of restrictions. It’s simply not proportionate and not necessary. But in removing the restrictions that we can no longer justify, we must also ask our community not to be complacent. It’s time to start learning to live with COVID, and if we do so responsibly, we can finally begin to regain some of the lost freedoms that COVID has cost us. And that should be cause for celebration.
I sincerely hope my niece will be able to visit her mother in Alderney. My sister needs someone to support her.
If she's double jabbed and is coming from the CTA there are no restrictions & no testing.
She is and is. Thought that was the case, but thanks. Bit of luck, and assuming Aurigny are flying, the rest of my sisters children will be able to visit her. Not sure, for other reasons, that I will.
They each would need to complete one of these before travel:
Aurigny is now flying a much increased schedule - from 2 flights a week to Gatwick to several per day. Although ironically the first arrivals on "open borders" day were delayed by fog!
Thanks again. Gatwick now, I see; used only to be Southampton.
And disruptions due to weather were common when I was going to Alderney quite often.
They've just re-started Southampton to Alderney direct flights with the change in border policy - no longer any need to go via Guernsey
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
At one time the Tories had a cohort of MP's who were from the squirearchy; didn't need a job but needed an occupation. People who 'did the right thing'. That 'right thing' might not have been so for the factory workers and other city dwellers, but there was a sort of code behind it. Those people have, it seems to me, vanished.
And who has replaced them? Wide boys.
Social media has had a bad effect on politics and political parties, but it has been particularly deleterious for Conservatives, especially Scottish ones. Discuss.
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
Or the SNP will become like the ANC in South Africa. The victors of independence not working for their people, but getting voted in continuously anyway ...
What happens to the SNP if it doesn’t achieve independence? Seems an alternative and interesting question
They are like the Earl of Bruce’s spider
Indeed. We’ll try, try and try again, until we win.
Scots only need to win once. The BritNats need to win every time. This is only going to end one way.
(Charles, at the time of the spider story he was already king.)
No you will not because the UK government will not allow you to.
2014 was a once in a generation vote and you will not get another until a generation has elapsed since then if ever.
Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998 anyway
*Your* UK government will (foolishly) not allow Scots to express their free will at the ballot box. Another UK government will.
At this moment in time I think Sturgeon will be the one having second thoughts as independence popularity wanes and Scots fear for their pensions
NEW: Latest @IpsosMORI data out today shows that just 6 in 10 Labour voters from 2019 believe that a Labour government led by Keir Starmer would do a better job running the country than the current government led by Boris Johnson
The problem Labour have is not just Starmer is a personality vacuum and they haven't really proposed any policy platform, the team around him is so weak and to some extent he has to have a fair number of them because of internal politics.
The Tories aren't exactly stellar, but just look at past week, Hancock has to resign and they bring Javid off the bench, who I don't think anybody doubts is an intelligent bloke. Eventually Boris will have the reshuffle and the idiots like Williamson will get the boot and sure up the Tory side.
Labour don't really have that luxury. They do have some better performers on the sidelines, but the problem is they either tried to stop Brexit (easy attack material for the Tories) and/or the left of Labour will do their nut.
And from the POV of Red Wall voters, labour shortages are a pretty good thing.
It will certainly be fun to watch. All of those jobs that the poor downtrodden English didn't want to do are now available again now that Harry Hun has been sent packing. Rural Anglia where the food industry had a shortage of labour even with a big eastern European contigent now gets to offer to the good people of Wisbech a job in the food factories.
What do you mean you don't want to work in a factory? Didn't you vote to get rid of the forrin so these jobs could be yours again like they weren't before?
Nissan confirm they are to build a 1 billion pound car battery factory in Sunderland
Absolutely coincidental that this announced on by Election Day
I hadn't thought about that but if so good politics
The BBC also says that 'The government is contributing to the cost of the expansion, but a precise figure has not been disclosed.'
Ion other words, a massive handout. Some might call it a bribe.
I am sorry but investing in the future green economy is essential and is actively promoted by all governments
All governments recently signed a “level playing field” treaty, but one of the signatories was crossing their fingers behind their back. Guess which one.
The EU are over and the UK will decide on investments and jobs
Investment decisions will surely be based on access to markets into which to sell, so the EU is not over. It's just that the relationship and dependency is different.
Big G’s statement that “the EU is over” neatly illustrates why the Conservative Party is not fit for purpose. Even moderates like Big G have now embraced the culture war. The past is alterable. The past never has been altered. Yookania is at war with Redpassportland. Yookania has always been at war with Redpassportland.
I don’t think that’s quite what Big G meant, rather than the EU is over as a key influence on domestic policy.
But your general point is correct.
Nevertheless, the Brexity culture warriors know their cause is both potent and fragile; hence the government’s bung to the totemic Nissan.
And the irony is that, unless the EU collapses (which it probably won't), it's still going to be there, and the UK is still going to have to work out, case by case, how it wants to engage. The TCA has a five-yearly review, the NI protocol comes up for debate every four years. Even from here, the question "how do we want to trade divergence from EU rules for ease of access" is still going to be there. Every single time.
Whatever this is, it ain't a Done Brexit.
So the protocol review is due end-2024, TCA end-2025, and therefore likely to be part of the next general election debate?
Johnson would love the next two elections to be about defending Brexit.
Despite the "will of the people" bollocks where an advisory referendum in the 2015 parliament was somehow binding on the 2017 parliament, Brexit will never go away as an issue.
There is no end point to aim for, no settled position to reach. We're doing trade deals where the reported objective is to do different to the EU. We don't have a working post-EU settlement that works now never mind one that is sustainable. Which forces this and future parliaments to keep revisiting the subject almost regardless of whether a future government gets elected with a mandate to do so.
This is a problem for all the big parties bar perhaps the SNP. The Tories will never get Brexit done nor be able to deliver the promised benefits. Non-delivery will become an increasing problem. Labour and to a lesser extent the LibDems have no post-Brexit position to take and an electorate that remain hostile to Europe/Brexit. Only the SNP can gleefully point at the protracted issues and say "we told you so, here's the simple solution.
Question - which of the big 3 UK parties can reach a post-Brexit position fastest and make it stick? It surely has to be based on increased trade and protecting standards, and for both a Cameron-esque "Big open and comprehensive" deal with the EEA is the solution. The challenge of course is persuading people that the EU and EEA - which are entirely different things - are entirely different things...
They're not entirely different things. The EEA is just a vehicle to push EU single market law into neighbouring states.
Laughable stupidity. They are legally separate. Is Norway a member of the EU then?
The only laughable stupidity was voting for Brexit after a campaign to leave the single market, and then complaining that you got what you voted for.
The EEA does not exist independently of the EU. The laws which are transposed to EEA members are made by and voted on by the EU institutions. Leaving the position we had, with a voice in all the EU institutions, in order to join the EEA would have made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
"There is a free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey that all European nations have access to … after we vote to leave we will remain in this zone."
Vote Leave, 2016.
We are still in that zone. Just like Turkey we have a trade agreement.
Like I said I think me and thee sit in different existences. So Turkey has a customs agreement, we do not, and you think we're just like Turkey? Rightho...
BBC news going big on Nissan and now Boris being interviewed, complete with Nissan branded jacket sporting 'prime minister'
He really knows how to speak to his red wall voters, and create fury with his opponents
Thats why he is hated so much on here, he is feared as a political opponent.
No, it is because he is a twat and an embarrassment.
Isn't that what you want in a political opponent? That would surely make him so much easier to beat.
One would have thought so if one believed the electorate had a decent choice. The problem at the last GE, as I have said before was the choice was between dumb and dumber and the electorate chose dumb. Fanbois of Johnson do crack me up though. They actually believe in him! He must be pissing himself.
"The channel needs an average daily audience of 139,000 to attract the advertising spend needed to break even on annual costs of £25m, according to Enders Analysis."
Telegraph
Some of us on here long argued they couldn't see the business case for GB News and more so after you see the "star" hires they made. Sky News doesn't do those numbers.
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
Or the SNP will become like the ANC in South Africa. The victors of independence not working for their people, but getting voted in continuously anyway ...
What happens to the SNP if it doesn’t achieve independence? Seems an alternative and interesting question
They are like the Earl of Bruce’s spider
I’d say the parties that have at best managed to be a poor second in Scotland for the last 10 years embody that particular fable.
The reason Curtice says “the Indy argument is cooling” is precisely because of brexit. It is never ending, complex, full of contradictions and it is playing out in front of everyone.
How the SNP argues the same doesn’t happen with Indy (on a larger scale) is one for them to answer.
NEW: Latest @IpsosMORI data out today shows that just 6 in 10 Labour voters from 2019 believe that a Labour government led by Keir Starmer would do a better job running the country than the current government led by Boris Johnson
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
Or the SNP will become like the ANC in South Africa. The victors of independence not working for their people, but getting voted in continuously anyway ...
What happens to the SNP if it doesn’t achieve independence? Seems an alternative and interesting question
They are like the Earl of Bruce’s spider
I’d say the parties that have at best managed to be a poor second in Scotland for the last 10 years embody that particular fable.
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
Or the SNP will become like the ANC in South Africa. The victors of independence not working for their people, but getting voted in continuously anyway ...
What happens to the SNP if it doesn’t achieve independence? Seems an alternative and interesting question
They are like the Earl of Bruce’s spider
Indeed. We’ll try, try and try again, until we win.
Scots only need to win once. The BritNats need to win every time. This is only going to end one way.
(Charles, at the time of the spider story he was already king.)
No you will not because the UK government will not allow you to.
2014 was a once in a generation vote and you will not get another until a generation has elapsed since then if ever.
Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998 anyway
*Your* UK government will (foolishly) not allow Scots to express their free will at the ballot box. Another UK government will.
At this moment in time I think Sturgeon will be the one having second thoughts as independence popularity wanes and Scots fear for their pensions
Question. As pensions were not under threat in 2014 does that mean that Liar plans to play politics with people's pensions as you suggest?
Does not the apparent willingness of the supposed UK government to blackmail Scotland just make it obvious why every day that goes past strengthens the case that the Union must come to an end?
From today there are also things we need to do very differently. And one of the most important is to change our thinking around what cases in the Bailiwick means. We’ve associated it with hospitalisation, with deaths, with the potential for health services to be overwhelmed. We’ve justified what are really very strict and quite extreme travel restrictions because of those risks. But the risk profile has changed with more than 70% of entire population having had at least one dose. The data shows a full vaccination affords 95% protection against needing hospital care. Younger age-groups are significantly less vulnerable and already far less likely to become very ill and need hospital care. No, it’s not completely risk-free, it never will be no matter what we do. But it is a big change compared to the risk we faced before the vaccine. And as we no longer face the same levels of risk, we can no longer justify the same levels of restrictions. It’s simply not proportionate and not necessary. But in removing the restrictions that we can no longer justify, we must also ask our community not to be complacent. It’s time to start learning to live with COVID, and if we do so responsibly, we can finally begin to regain some of the lost freedoms that COVID has cost us. And that should be cause for celebration.
Looks like a very sensible statement from at least one part of UK (I know, I know, not really)
I think the UK governments really need to start pushing this line - are we really "the most dangerous country in Europe"? I know deaths are a lagging indicator....but:
That chart is misleading too by being on a log scale rather than a linear one.
Furthermore our deaths are so miniscule and our testing and case numbers so massive that there must be an element of 'deaths with[in 28 days of] Covid' rather than 'deaths from Covid' in our numbers.
Someone, if they were interested, could produce an actuarial estimate of death rate with Covid, by looking at the age breakdown of Covid cases and using life tables to calculate a death rate for the 28-days out of a year. This would be a lower bound estimate, because I'm guessing everyone admitted to hospital is still tested, so you'd have asymptomatic cases picked up there at a greater rate than for the general population.
If you used the ONS infection survey figures then you would correct for that effect, but the uncertainty range for the age bands is quite high.
I'd find that analysis a lot more convincing than mere assertion. I accept that there is a rate of death coincidental with Covid infection, but, in the absence of an actual analysis, I have no idea if that is currently a substantial fraction of our overall daily deaths yet.
Just off the top of my head, I think the population average annual death rate is about 1%, 28 days is 1/13th of a year, so you'd expect a death rate of about 1/13th of 1%. But our cases are currently higher in a younger age group, so you'd think the actuarial death rate would be lower. Perhaps a lot lower.
I think someone posted yesterday that the estimated IFR in the UK was now below 0.1% so that suggests the two numbers are close enough that it's worth a proper calculation.
And from the POV of Red Wall voters, labour shortages are a pretty good thing.
It will certainly be fun to watch. All of those jobs that the poor downtrodden English didn't want to do are now available again now that Harry Hun has been sent packing. Rural Anglia where the food industry had a shortage of labour even with a big eastern European contigent now gets to offer to the good people of Wisbech a job in the food factories.
What do you mean you don't want to work in a factory? Didn't you vote to get rid of the forrin so these jobs could be yours again like they weren't before?
I was talking to a Belfast-born friend of mine recently. His sister and brother, as teenagers, went over to East Anglia to work in the food factories one summer, must have been about 1980 so good old days and all that. She did nothing but pick out the dead mice, and worse, from the long stream of pea-pods going into the machinery.
And from the POV of Red Wall voters, labour shortages are a pretty good thing.
It will certainly be fun to watch. All of those jobs that the poor downtrodden English didn't want to do are now available again now that Harry Hun has been sent packing. Rural Anglia where the food industry had a shortage of labour even with a big eastern European contigent now gets to offer to the good people of Wisbech a job in the food factories.
What do you mean you don't want to work in a factory? Didn't you vote to get rid of the forrin so these jobs could be yours again like they weren't before?
The question is whether the issue was the nature of the job itself or the pay. If the former, agreed, it will be interesting. However, it is basic economics, that if you increase the supply of labour - especially cheap labour - wages are bound to go down. Maybe we see wages go to a level that starts to attract people.
Another question of course is whether many of these jobs which were done by cheap foreign labour are now automated.
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
Yes, I think that until there is independence the SNP with all its many faults and infighting will dominate Scotland. Afterwards it can safely be dissolved, into rival parties, and more functional politics.
One party states are not good, whether SNP in Holyrood, Labour in Cardiff, DUP in Stormont or Tory in Westminster. They all generate sleaze when hegemonic.
!
And Drakeford’s Welsh Labour does not seem to be as entitled, arrogant and sleazy as Scottish Labour once was when it had hegemony.
Drakeford himself is unassuming, but the grip Welsh Labour has on public life in Wales is way more arrogant & sleazy than anything in Westminster.
Llafur have run Wales as a one-party state since 1999, to no apparent benefit to anyone apart from themselves. They have prospered while the Welsh are fed on scraps.
If Llafur is not as "as entitled, arrogant and sleazy as Scottish Labour once was", then SLAB must have been really something special in terms of semi-criminal organisations.
Call it the "Boris Banger Buster deal" or whatever. Just remove the barriers to trade so that we can all get on with our lives. Its a radical idea - as our standards are their standards, lets make it economically viable to send products from GB to NI again.
When you put it like that, it shows how disingenuous it is for an organisation that claims the Good Friday Agreement is paramount to insist that sausages from an equivalent regulatory regime are a threat so grave that they justify barriers that disturb the balance.
Barriers that we demanded, not them. We are aligned. We will stay aligned. So there is no need for an SPS border anywhere. It is us who are insisting on having one, not them. We demand a barrier because not to have a barrier means that we can't theoretically drop our standards and start importing weevil-infested American food despite our stated policy of never dropping our standards.
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
Or the SNP will become like the ANC in South Africa. The victors of independence not working for their people, but getting voted in continuously anyway ...
What happens to the SNP if it doesn’t achieve independence? Seems an alternative and interesting question
They are like the Earl of Bruce’s spider
Indeed. We’ll try, try and try again, until we win.
Scots only need to win once. The BritNats need to win every time. This is only going to end one way.
(Charles, at the time of the spider story he was already king.)
No you will not because the UK government will not allow you to.
2014 was a once in a generation vote and you will not get another until a generation has elapsed since then if ever.
Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998 anyway
*Your* UK government will (foolishly) not allow Scots to express their free will at the ballot box. Another UK government will.
Labour might do in 5 to 10 years if they ever get back in but they would also align more closely to the EEA and Customs Union and add devomax giving a different offer anyway
It's a risky one though, unlike C&A which felt like one of those golden tips that seemed right: thank you again, Mike: your tip paid for my day at Wimbledon yesterday among many other things!
Peak Boris was May 25th. There is a discernible and definite shift now.
The one thing which might lift the Conservatives back is if England win Euro 2020 in front of a full house at Wembley. Otherwise the tide has turned.
You may be right but the polling evidence really is not there for such a claim. The government has had a rough week or so and the press is hostile but these kind of things often flare up only to fizzle out again. All we need is a Grauniead - ' the day the polls turned' and we head back to square one.
What never fizzles out is Tory sleaze. The events of the last week fit into a recognisable pattern going back many decades.
What the Tories need is a generation of nice people. Good, honest, competent, straightforward, pleasant folk with no “side”. When one looks at the coming generation of young Tories one sees the exact opposite. Tory sleaze is going to be around for at least a half century to come.
No sleaze in the SNP thankfully. Salmond and Sturgeon say Hi..
Sleaze comes when a party is so long in power that they think that they can get away with anything and still get elected.
People like @Big_G_NorthWales will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette, and in Scotland will vote SNP until independence. Only after that will Scottish politics return to competitive parties.
The SNP will wither away post-independence. I, and many other members, will leave and help build new, normal parties. Our goal is for Scotland to be a normal country.
Or the SNP will become like the ANC in South Africa. The victors of independence not working for their people, but getting voted in continuously anyway ...
What happens to the SNP if it doesn’t achieve independence? Seems an alternative and interesting question
They are like the Earl of Bruce’s spider
Indeed. We’ll try, try and try again, until we win.
Scots only need to win once. The BritNats need to win every time. This is only going to end one way.
(Charles, at the time of the spider story he was already king.)
No you will not because the UK government will not allow you to.
2014 was a once in a generation vote and you will not get another until a generation has elapsed since then if ever.
Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998 anyway
*Your* UK government will (foolishly) not allow Scots to express their free will at the ballot box. Another UK government will.
At this moment in time I think Sturgeon will be the one having second thoughts as independence popularity wanes and Scots fear for their pensions
Question. As pensions were not under threat in 2014 does that mean that Liar plans to play politics with people's pensions as you suggest?
Does not the apparent willingness of the supposed UK government to blackmail Scotland just make it obvious why every day that goes past strengthens the case that the Union must come to an end?
Comments
Furthermore our deaths are so miniscule and our testing and case numbers so massive that there must be an element of 'deaths with[in 28 days of] Covid' rather than 'deaths from Covid' in our numbers.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2021/06/28/2003759903
On the face of it looks good (note the maintained neutralising activity against Delta), but this is only interim PII.
Side effect profile also seems promising.
Punters don't really care about the detail of what the EU is. Things were shit, they were told "vote for this and they will not be shit" and yet things are still shit. Sooner or later the excuses will lose traction and "how do we get better off" comes back and the solution of course is closer trade with no barriers.
Definitely prefer Starmer, but I wish he would up his game, and continue in the same vein he did at yesterday's pmq's.
It remains to be seen, but it is not impossible to think labour decide to stand at the next GE on a close single market relationship with the EU
And while future governments can reverse everything I just do not see it on the horizon
I lagged hospital occupancy by 7 days to allow for cases to translate into admissions. There's still some lag, but that's because hospitalisations take time to resolve.
I didn't even scale them, because hospital occupancy runs at a peak about two-thirds of the cases peak in the pre-vaccine era, so they're readily visible on the same scale.
People will then become aware how many and how many conflicting theories and views are out there. Will it help decision-making? Perhaps, perhaps not but I would rather hear peoples' views than not.
I am reminded of the Aesop fable whereby two men disagree over something and suggest getting a third to adjudicate whereby the question is posed why bother - the third person will only end up agreeing with one or the other of the men so we are back where we started.
You keep whinging about how there's full employment and rising wages.
We're getting investment after investment announced.
And all your predictions of doom and collapse have turned into dust, with just squeaky wheels complaining now.
The EEA does not exist independently of the EU. The laws which are transposed to EEA members are made by and voted on by the EU institutions. Leaving the position we had, with a voice in all the EU institutions, in order to join the EEA would have made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
https://traveltracker.gov.gg/
Aurigny is now flying a much increased schedule - from 2 flights a week to Gatwick to several per day. Although ironically the first arrivals on "open borders" day were delayed by fog!
https://www.eetimes.com/developing-the-first-orbiting-ic/
...Jack Kilby was a little more than two years removed from inventing the integrated circuit when he was promoted to lead Texas Instruments’ fledgling semiconductor lab. The year was 1961, and the Space Race was heating up. Kilby was working on three high-profile contracts—all were troubled.
Kilby was entrusted with making custom ICs for the Minuteman missile guidance system as well as devices for a U.S. Air Force computer system. The third project was a particularly challenging request from NASA...
...Kilby had previously supplied NASA with TI’s first commercially available chip – the TI SN502 – at a cost of about $450. But NASA needed an alternative that provided more power and speed in the same amount of space.
Kilby’s challenge: design a line of digital logic ICs to replace the SN502, but with 10 times the speed and one-tenth the power consumption. to help.
And NASA wanted it in 10 months.
The IC business was still on shaky ground: early critics noted remarkably low manufacturing yields along with the business challenges posed by the transition to mass production. Nevertheless, Kilby and Patrick Haggerty, one of TI’s co-founders, believed it could be done.
They were right.
“At that time, the majority of our business was defense contracts, and they all wanted smaller and lighter devices,” said Max Post, a TI retiree who was working in the chip maker’s corporate offices at the time...
It used to be that lots of towns had one large employer. Some worked on the factory floor, and others in the technical labs, and some in the manager's corridor. And the ladies made the tea or did the typing. And you grew up in that town, took a job in that factory appropriate to your intelligence and qualifications. You met your life-partner in that town and the cycle continued. Somewhere heaven.
It's not a bad way to structure society- except that if you give young people the chance to cut loose and go somewhere else, they take it. And then they meet someone else from somewhere else, and then there's no reason for them to return to their home town.
Hence small-medium towns get left behind. If they're in the right place, they become commuter hubs for cities. If not, you get the sort of human sadness that we see in Red Wall documentaries.
But there's still no going back. Partly because business has changed, but mostly because people don't want to be tied down like that.
From Aberdeen the "Highlands and Islands" zone starts on the Western Peripheral, so to deliver 9 miles from the Aberdeen depot into Westhill or the other commuter towns on the edges of the city costs 2.5x times more for a 75% shorter trip.
Have they looked at a map?
The answer to the first question will be, of course, the EU and the traitor Remoaners. Expect to see the dial on nationalism turned up even higher.
By the way, I hope you're taking notes. This is exactly how Scottish Independence will play out too.
The UK is in a great middle ground of being massively in favour of vaccination and against restrictions (The polling on restrictions WILL switch once they're dropped - huge tendency toward thje status quo in polls on lockdown to my eyes.)
And disruptions due to weather were common when I was going to Alderney quite often.
Almost all gone
Needless to say his entire feed is retweets of Pagel and other indy SAGE members and he's been calling for restrictions to be tightened for a few weeks now.
Some people just want us to live like this forever and to hell with the consequences. I saw my grandmother for the first time in 18 months at the weekend and she's noticeably less mobile from not being able to get out and about just to do the shopping. It was quite upsetting to see.
Currently you cannot negotiate with the UK government in good faith. So we won't be getting any kind of preferential trade deal on the kind of scale that we need whilst crayon drawings are needed.
2014 was a once in a generation vote and you will not get another until a generation has elapsed since then if ever.
Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998 anyway
The UK as a nimble independent nation should be ever evolving. Adjusting to changing technologies, adjusting to changing opportunities. Not settled.
The Swiss have this right, they are constantly updating their relations with the EU and others in a way that suits them best. Its never settled. The EU hate it and want them nailed down, but it works for the Swiss and will work for us too.
Why the heck would we throw away our agility to be locked down and settled?
Boris does not want to be the 21st century Lord North who lost Scotland so will continue to refuse indyref2 as long as he is in power and nothing the Nats can do about it
Con 346
Lab 220
SNP 55
DUP 8
LD 6
PC 4
SDLP 2
Grn 1
All 1
Speaker 1
(SF 7)
Conservative majority of 42
NOC 12% probability
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html
and
He really knows how to speak to his red wall voters, and create fury with his opponents
Looks like you're the one who needs crayons. Try taking them out of your nose and stop saying "wibble".
Is the UK the first country to announce "third jabs"?
And from the POV of Red Wall voters, labour shortages are a pretty good thing.
Don't write off the "terrible mistake" idea just yet - people are getting broken off the "isn't this brilliant" group over time. I have no thought that England will want back into the EU, but I do expect that a rebranding will be done of the status quo.
Despite all the huff and puff we remain aligned with EEA standards and practices. Despite the absurd barriers we insisted be erected and then failed to actually implement, a sausage in GB is still absolutely compliant with EEA sausage standards and will continue to be so.
Call it the "Boris Banger Buster deal" or whatever. Just remove the barriers to trade so that we can all get on with our lives. Its a radical idea - as our standards are their standards, lets make it economically viable to send products from GB to NI again.
I don't work 9-5, I work all sorts of hours, which is why I have time to post here in the daytime. As much as you're obsessed with what I do for some strange reason.
According to your analysis, the future is very bleak for the 3 Scottish Unionist parties. So, the only thing keeping Scotland in the Union is threats and bribes from London. What a sound basis for a “voluntary” union of equals.
NI don't help themselves by electing people like the DUP and Sinn Fein, why should we?
Vote Leave, 2016.
A deal that doesn't represent a fraction of 1% of what we've given up that is on terms preferential to us? That's where the crayons come in. I think someone gave a set to Lord Frost as he's been able to realise for the first time that for some reason the EU had a set of red lines that they stuck to and the bad man in Brussels refused to do what we told them to do.
https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1410560681678622723
A pretty gob-smacking finding.
"The channel needs an average daily audience of 139,000 to attract the advertising spend needed to break even on annual costs of £25m, according to Enders Analysis."
Telegraph
How the SNP argues the same doesn’t happen with Indy (on a larger scale) is one for them to answer.
The Tories aren't exactly stellar, but just look at past week, Hancock has to resign and they bring Javid off the bench, who I don't think anybody doubts is an intelligent bloke. Eventually Boris will have the reshuffle and the idiots like Williamson will get the boot and sure up the Tory side.
Labour don't really have that luxury. They do have some better performers on the sidelines, but the problem is they either tried to stop Brexit (easy attack material for the Tories) and/or the left of Labour will do their nut.
What do you mean you don't want to work in a factory? Didn't you vote to get rid of the forrin so these jobs could be yours again like they weren't before?
https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1410560696270610436?s=20
Does not the apparent willingness of the supposed UK government to blackmail Scotland just make it obvious why every day that goes past strengthens the case that the Union must come to an end?
If you used the ONS infection survey figures then you would correct for that effect, but the uncertainty range for the age bands is quite high.
I'd find that analysis a lot more convincing than mere assertion. I accept that there is a rate of death coincidental with Covid infection, but, in the absence of an actual analysis, I have no idea if that is currently a substantial fraction of our overall daily deaths yet.
Just off the top of my head, I think the population average annual death rate is about 1%, 28 days is 1/13th of a year, so you'd expect a death rate of about 1/13th of 1%. But our cases are currently higher in a younger age group, so you'd think the actuarial death rate would be lower. Perhaps a lot lower.
I think someone posted yesterday that the estimated IFR in the UK was now below 0.1% so that suggests the two numbers are close enough that it's worth a proper calculation.
Another question of course is whether many of these jobs which were done by cheap foreign labour are now automated.