Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
The EU already tried to escalate it and was forced to back down. The idea that they have unlimited scope to be punitive has been proven to be wrong.
Just to demonstrate to @HYUFD that his repeated maths averages don't mean what he thinks they are, look at the figures for Surrey.
The average salary in Guildford is £32,000 The average house price in Guildford is £550,000 69% of Guildford is owner-occupied.
Averages don't mean what you think they mean. Because they average away inconsistencies.
Yes because Guildford is a commuter belt town and many of the owner occupiers there will be Londoners who cannot afford to buy in London and rent in the capital so move to Guildford for cheaper housing where they can afford to buy.
However that will become increasingly a problem for those who work in Guildford on a lower salary than the average London wage as they cannot afford to buy as incomers from London push up property prices in their home town
Well how to completely misunderstand a post. That is not what Philip is telling you. He is pointing out to you that your maths is crap.
He posted a figure for the average salary of workers in Guildford, ignoring the fact that plenty of residents of Guildford don't work in Guildford but commute to London where they would earn the average London wage of £41,000 (and in many cases more in the City) not the average Guildford wage of only £32,000.
So for Guildford locals who live and work in Guildford there would be a shortage of housing they could afford too
That wasn't the point he was making. He was pointing out your mistake in the use of averages.
There was no mistake, even if you ignore the ratio of the average home to the average wage or even the average home affordable by first time buyers and just focus on a few exceptions which would be affordable to the average earner, there are vast numbers of average or below average earners who would make up the demand for them. Far more than the available supply
I would have hated being your maths teacher. I can just imagine you in front of Turing -'No your wrong, I'm right'. Did you argue with your maths teacher?
Does it never ever cross your mind that a number (probably all) of us on here are more numerate than you when we point this stuff out?
We are not talking Politics here, or the existence of God. That is stuff that is opinion and there is other stuff that isn't. Maths isn't and you misuse it all the time and can never see it when pointed out to you.
The Maths is quite clear, even for the average worker on an average London salary combining the salary of them and their partner for a 4.5 times salary mortgage plus a 10% deposit they would not be able to afford the average London property or even the average property price paid by first time buyers in London for property.
As I have already made clear too there are far too many average earners or below average earners in London seeking to buy the few properties cheaper than that in London for the limited supply available.
I said I was going to stop, but one more go. What is the average of these numbers @HYUFD:
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 and 1,000,000.
Do you see the issue now? I know it is rather exaggerated but hopefully you can see the flaw you made now. And as Dixiedean said the same issue happens with salaries so counter-acting the issue.
So I expect you are right re affordability but the argument you keep putting re the averages is wrong and most first time buyers do not pay the average price of a first time buyer house (see the example I gave, the vast majority of the numbers were below the arithmetic average).
So even on median figures the point stands and there are simply not enough affordable homes in London for those on the median London wage to be able to afford to buy
Finally.
Please remember I kept saying I didn't disagree with you on affordability so I don't know why you keep trying to argue with me on that, but you do now agree your use of the arithmetic mean was wrong.
Go on say it, I know you can. Say I was wrong. I have already done it once today so I'm sure you can.
If you are comparing the mean London salary to the mean London house price/mean price first time buyers paid or the lower median London salary to the lower median London house price it really makes little difference.
Both are distorted and both show the average Londoner cannot afford to buy in London. You were just being pedantic for the sake of it really
Firstly @dixiedean and @IanB2 set you nicely for that comeback sometime ago and both Philip and I acknowledged it and even offered it up to you, but no you just ignored it and carried on talking rubbish and as I put it then you 'grasped defeat from the jaws of victory'.
No I am not being pedantic. As usual you quote some stat and misuse it and produce erroneous stuff that you call facts and which aren't.
Go on do it, say you were wrong. I bet you can't. Both Philip and I acknowledge our missing the salary average issue. See if you can do the same. bet you can't
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
Boris Johnson's reluctance to turn to the EU to ease a supply chain crisis has highlighted his government's priority: Brexit first https://trib.al/tYDUOjq
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
The EU already tried to escalate it and was forced to back down. The idea that they have unlimited scope to be punitive has been proven to be wrong.
Who is talking about unlimited power?
You are suggesting that the EU can arbitrarily decide that the use of Article 16 is "unreasonable" and then act outside the treaty to impose "trade sanctions of its choice".
It can and it will argue that the sanctions are proportionate and reasonable, and then the issue will proceed to dispute resolution. In the meantime, the sanctions are imposed and we all suffer the consequences. The idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to tackle the mess that they created is for the fairies.
What kind of trade sanctions are you anticipating?
Sanctions?
If sanctions are imposed, we’ll have to respond with appropriate measures….
Just to demonstrate to @HYUFD that his repeated maths averages don't mean what he thinks they are, look at the figures for Surrey.
The average salary in Guildford is £32,000 The average house price in Guildford is £550,000 69% of Guildford is owner-occupied.
Averages don't mean what you think they mean. Because they average away inconsistencies.
Yes because Guildford is a commuter belt town and many of the owner occupiers there will be Londoners who cannot afford to buy in London and rent in the capital so move to Guildford for cheaper housing where they can afford to buy.
However that will become increasingly a problem for those who work in Guildford on a lower salary than the average London wage as they cannot afford to buy as incomers from London push up property prices in their home town
Well how to completely misunderstand a post. That is not what Philip is telling you. He is pointing out to you that your maths is crap.
He posted a figure for the average salary of workers in Guildford, ignoring the fact that plenty of residents of Guildford don't work in Guildford but commute to London where they would earn the average London wage of £41,000 (and in many cases more in the City) not the average Guildford wage of only £32,000.
So for Guildford locals who live and work in Guildford there would be a shortage of housing they could afford too
That wasn't the point he was making. He was pointing out your mistake in the use of averages.
There was no mistake, even if you ignore the ratio of the average home to the average wage or even the average home affordable by first time buyers and just focus on a few exceptions which would be affordable to the average earner, there are vast numbers of average or below average earners who would make up the demand for them. Far more than the available supply
I would have hated being your maths teacher. I can just imagine you in front of Turing -'No your wrong, I'm right'. Did you argue with your maths teacher?
Does it never ever cross your mind that a number (probably all) of us on here are more numerate than you when we point this stuff out?
We are not talking Politics here, or the existence of God. That is stuff that is opinion and there is other stuff that isn't. Maths isn't and you misuse it all the time and can never see it when pointed out to you.
The Maths is quite clear, even for the average worker on an average London salary combining the salary of them and their partner for a 4.5 times salary mortgage plus a 10% deposit they would not be able to afford the average London property or even the average property price paid by first time buyers in London for property.
As I have already made clear too there are far too many average earners or below average earners in London seeking to buy the few properties cheaper than that in London for the limited supply available.
One of the problems is that the first thing anyone from overseas who has a lot of money does is buy a property in London as a reliable place to store their money, which must raise prices and reduce availability for local people. In most countries they have restrictions on that sort of thing.
The reasons are thus: spectacular long term planning rather than focusing on the short term excellent history of achieving his objectives solving the energy crisis due to unlimited power top political tipster - everything proceeds as he foresees promoter of equal opportunities - his second in command is a disabled war veteran from a minority religion who is both black and white
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
The EU already tried to escalate it and was forced to back down. The idea that they have unlimited scope to be punitive has been proven to be wrong.
Who is talking about unlimited power?
You are suggesting that the EU can arbitrarily decide that the use of Article 16 is "unreasonable" and then act outside the treaty to impose "trade sanctions of its choice".
It can and it will argue that the sanctions are proportionate and reasonable, and then the issue will proceed to dispute resolution. In the meantime, the sanctions are imposed and we all suffer the consequences. The idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to tackle the mess that they created is for the fairies.
What kind trade sanctions are you anticipating?
I have absolutely no idea. My argument is that the EU is not just going to stand by and allow Frost and Johnson to take action that it does not agree with. I suspect the level of response will depend on what practical steps the government takes when (and it does look like when) it invokes Article 16.
Is it not the case that since January, the EU has stood by while the UK took actions it didn't agree with? (Or at least they did nothing more than futile gestures.)
If ever there was a journey, William, it was yours.
I made the same journey, just four years earlier.
Rochdale made the same journey as William in reverse.
I think their mooted action on the border/Covid/vaccines was despicable.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
This is the sentence which will jar with your fellow Conservative (and Unionist)s. Or would have once. Or should.
"The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog."
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
Some fascinating hypothetical polling on the French Presidential election this morning. A run off between Macron and Pecresse (with Le Pen eliminated) ends 50-50.
To the more immediate and Norway votes in one week. The latest Kantar poll:
Changes from 2017 Storting election:
Labour: 23.4% (-4) Conservatives: 20.5% (-4.5) Centre Party: 14.0% (+3.7) Progress Party: 10.0% (-5.2) Socialist Left: 9.4% (+3.4) Red Party: 5.4% (+3) Liberal Party: 4.6% (+0.2) Greens: 4.3% (+1.1) Christian People's Party: 3.6% (-0.6) Democrats for Norway: 1.6% (+0.9)
In terms of the voting blocs, the centre-left Red bloc (Labour, Centre, Socialist Left, Red) have 52.2% and the centre-right Blue bloc (Conservative, Progress, Liberal, Christian People's Party) 38.7% so that's a significant advantage for the centre-left unless the two blocs re-align post-election. In 2017, the Blues were on 48.8 and the Reds on 46.1 so that's about an 8% swing to the centre-left.
interesting and thank you. I've had a few quid on Pecresse at 22/1. Hoping Zemmour might strip enough votes from Le Pen to see her into round 2. oh and her wikipedia photo is rather attractive.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
This is the sentence which will jar with your fellow Conservative (and Unionist)s. Or would have once. Or should.
"The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog."
One is getting a sense that NI is being allowed to recede from the British [sic] Tory vision of the Union. Obvs furrin, if it is part of the EU.
I wonder how much longer it will be before the engineering solution for the bridge to Ireland is admitted to be the same as that for the Garden Bridge?
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
Yes, since the priority was a trade deal suitable for GB.
The turmoil in NI was a price worth paying to get the English what they wanted.
I note that those left-of-centre commentators who were so critical of Johnson and the London govt and laudatory of the administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff for their respective Covid responses have gone quiet of late.
Much as I am loathed to defend the divisive Ms. Sturgeon, the policy to allow a free for all in travel to India from these islands was largely driven by Mr Johnson, allegedly so that he could cultivate a trade deal with India. Ms Sturgeon, it could be argued, has clearly been pretty crap at managing the fallout from that.
7.7% of UK cases, 7% of UK deaths - Scotland is still slightly better, albeit not good in absolute terms.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
There certainly needs to be a certain amount of persuasion of the Great British Public that this is a triumph that will become an even greater one:
Latest @YouGov@thetimes poll. In hindsight #Brexit right 39 (-2); wrong 48 (+1). Fwork 2-3.9 (ch since 25-26.8). Largest lead of wrong over right since Dec. 2020.
Thinking about Brexit, which of the following comes closest to your view? We should rejoin the EU 30 % / We should remain outside the EU but negotiate a closer relationship with them than we have now 20 % / We should remain outside the EU and keep the same relationship with the EU as we have now 21 % / We should remain outside the EU and negotiate a more distant relationship with them than we have now 18 %
Now, there's no meaningful mandate to change direction in any of those figures. But the crowd (who, even when they're not wise, need to be treated as such) aren't seeing it as a triumph, either.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
This is the sentence which will jar with your fellow Conservative (and Unionist)s. Or would have once. Or should.
"The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog."
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
Yes, since the priority was a trade deal suitable for GB.
The turmoil in NI was a price worth paying to get the English what they wanted.
Now they can go back and sort out NI.
You are an English nationalist so from an England-only perspective I totally get your perspective.
Worzel is PM of the United Kingdom though. He is supposed to consider the interests of the union (and said so at the DUP conference...) and having considered them decided to rip them up.
For a Conservative and Unionist PM it was extraordinary behaviour. And as I have said repeatedly the dismissal of the smaller nation and the union itself will be replayed endlessly north of the wall as the long campaign for the independence referendum finally shifts into the actual short campaign.
Didn't bloody go did I really. Just mowed a bit of lawn.
At least with a lawn the mean, mode and median height are all going to be the same.
Only if he has a normal lawn
There has never ever been so much interest in my lawn. Would you like a thread header on it?
Nah, if you've got the spare time, you can come and cut my lawn (grass height of which is far from normal; it needs a cut and this year's seeded areas are skewing high)
It's people like you who jinxed England getting the runs to win by saying "I can see England getting the runs". No chance now you've said it. By being this pessimistic I can only be right or pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong.
I note that those left-of-centre commentators who were so critical of Johnson and the London govt and laudatory of the administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff for their respective Covid responses have gone quiet of late.
Much as I am loathed to defend the divisive Ms. Sturgeon, the policy to allow a free for all in travel to India from these islands was largely driven by Mr Johnson, allegedly so that he could cultivate a trade deal with India. Ms Sturgeon, it could be argued, has clearly been pretty crap at managing the fallout from that.
7.7% of UK cases, 7% of UK deaths - Scotland is still slightly better, albeit not good in absolute terms.
English tourism to Scotland being the unspoken cause of the big spike in places that English "staycation" tourists have gone to.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
Yes, since the priority was a trade deal suitable for GB.
The turmoil in NI was a price worth paying to get the English what they wanted.
Now they can go back and sort out NI.
You are an English nationalist so from an England-only perspective I totally get your perspective.
Worzel is PM of the United Kingdom though. He is supposed to consider the interests of the union (and said so at the DUP conference...) and having considered them decided to rip them up.
For a Conservative and Unionist PM it was extraordinary behaviour. And as I have said repeatedly the dismissal of the smaller nation and the union itself will be replayed endlessly north of the wall as the long campaign for the independence referendum finally shifts into the actual short campaign.
If the Northern Irish wish to be considered equal parts of the union, maybe they ought to consider voting for the Tories, Labour or Lib Dems instead of niche NI parties?
Its NI voters that have estranged NI politics from British politics, not Boris. Boris has done the right thing by his MPs and his voters.
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
I 100% hand on heart believe every word of it.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
Yes, since the priority was a trade deal suitable for GB.
The turmoil in NI was a price worth paying to get the English what they wanted.
Now they can go back and sort out NI.
You are an English nationalist so from an England-only perspective I totally get your perspective.
Worzel is PM of the United Kingdom though. He is supposed to consider the interests of the union (and said so at the DUP conference...) and having considered them decided to rip them up.
For a Conservative and Unionist PM it was extraordinary behaviour. And as I have said repeatedly the dismissal of the smaller nation and the union itself will be replayed endlessly north of the wall as the long campaign for the independence referendum finally shifts into the actual short campaign.
If the Northern Irish wish to be considered equal parts of the union, maybe they ought to consider voting for the Tories, Labour or Lib Dems instead of niche NI parties?
Its NI voters that have estranged NI politics from British politics, not Boris. Boris has done the right thing by his MPs and his voters.
Hmm, the Tories (for instance) don't stand candidates there. So hardly the locals' fault for not voting for Mr Johnson, is it?
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
Yes, since the priority was a trade deal suitable for GB.
The turmoil in NI was a price worth paying to get the English what they wanted.
Now they can go back and sort out NI.
You are an English nationalist so from an England-only perspective I totally get your perspective.
Worzel is PM of the United Kingdom though. He is supposed to consider the interests of the union (and said so at the DUP conference...) and having considered them decided to rip them up.
For a Conservative and Unionist PM it was extraordinary behaviour. And as I have said repeatedly the dismissal of the smaller nation and the union itself will be replayed endlessly north of the wall as the long campaign for the independence referendum finally shifts into the actual short campaign.
If the Northern Irish wish to be considered equal parts of the union, maybe they ought to consider voting for the Tories, Labour or Lib Dems instead of niche NI parties?
Its NI voters that have estranged NI politics from British politics, not Boris. Boris has done the right thing by his MPs and his voters.
Alternately "if the Northern Irish wish to be considered equal parts of the Union, maybe they should have voted for Brexit"
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
Yes, since the priority was a trade deal suitable for GB.
The turmoil in NI was a price worth paying to get the English what they wanted.
Now they can go back and sort out NI.
You are an English nationalist so from an England-only perspective I totally get your perspective.
Worzel is PM of the United Kingdom though. He is supposed to consider the interests of the union (and said so at the DUP conference...) and having considered them decided to rip them up.
For a Conservative and Unionist PM it was extraordinary behaviour. And as I have said repeatedly the dismissal of the smaller nation and the union itself will be replayed endlessly north of the wall as the long campaign for the independence referendum finally shifts into the actual short campaign.
If the Northern Irish wish to be considered equal parts of the union, maybe they ought to consider voting for the Tories, Labour or Lib Dems instead of niche NI parties?
Its NI voters that have estranged NI politics from British politics, not Boris. Boris has done the right thing by his MPs and his voters.
Hmm, the Tories (for instance) don't stand candidates there. So hardly the locals' fault for not voting for Mr Johnson, is it?
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
And also the Norweigan government created a sovereign wealth fund while the British government used the North Sea as a magic money tree to subsidise mass unemployment and the loss of industry.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
This is the sentence which will jar with your fellow Conservative (and Unionist)s. Or would have once. Or should.
"The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog."
Of course you know I'm not a Unionist don't you?
So I have no qualms saying that.
Oh yes I'm aware of that. But it puts you a bit "out there" in terms of what political settlement you want so as to render many of your other views on the matter less interesting or relevant.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
Yes, since the priority was a trade deal suitable for GB.
The turmoil in NI was a price worth paying to get the English what they wanted.
Now they can go back and sort out NI.
You are an English nationalist so from an England-only perspective I totally get your perspective.
Worzel is PM of the United Kingdom though. He is supposed to consider the interests of the union (and said so at the DUP conference...) and having considered them decided to rip them up.
For a Conservative and Unionist PM it was extraordinary behaviour. And as I have said repeatedly the dismissal of the smaller nation and the union itself will be replayed endlessly north of the wall as the long campaign for the independence referendum finally shifts into the actual short campaign.
If the Northern Irish wish to be considered equal parts of the union, maybe they ought to consider voting for the Tories, Labour or Lib Dems instead of niche NI parties?
Its NI voters that have estranged NI politics from British politics, not Boris. Boris has done the right thing by his MPs and his voters.
Hmm, the Tories (for instance) don't stand candidates there. So hardly the locals' fault for not voting for Mr Johnson, is it?
*cough*
They only got going in the late 1980s on by when it was arguably too late. And they don't stand in all seats, either. But basically I take the point!
Tom Harrison and a group of senior executives at the England and Wales Cricket Board are poised to share a projected £2.1m bonus pot despite making 62 job cuts last year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tom Harrison and a group of senior executives at the England and Wales Cricket Board are poised to share a projected £2.1m bonus pot despite making 62 job cuts last year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tom Harrison and a group of senior executives at the England and Wales Cricket Board are poised to share a projected £2.1m bonus pot despite making 62 job cuts last year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
If you look at reserves per person, the difference is really stark - they are something like 20x better endowed. And if oil and gas is ever discovered in significant quantities in the Barents Sea (and I know some people who are very optimistic that it is there), then that number will look even bigger.
I note that those left-of-centre commentators who were so critical of Johnson and the London govt and laudatory of the administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff for their respective Covid responses have gone quiet of late.
Much as I am loathed to defend the divisive Ms. Sturgeon, the policy to allow a free for all in travel to India from these islands was largely driven by Mr Johnson, allegedly so that he could cultivate a trade deal with India. Ms Sturgeon, it could be argued, has clearly been pretty crap at managing the fallout from that.
7.7% of UK cases, 7% of UK deaths - Scotland is still slightly better, albeit not good in absolute terms.
English tourism to Scotland being the unspoken cause of the big spike in places that English "staycation" tourists have gone to.
So the Scottish Covid rate is 2.5x England's because some dirty English gave it to you.
Hasn't taken long for you to pick up a rather bad case of Xenophobia from the local Nits.
It's at times like these I feel as though I should have listened to my dad and supported India.
Supporting England shows we're not glory hunters.
At least I've had the England rugby union and Liverpool to give me joy.
A England cricket fan and a Spurs fan over the last 30/40 years cannot have been much fun.
I do at least have a claim to supporting India!
Indeed, England cricket, England football, Spurs. Not been a great sporting life for me, still when we do win something like the cricket WC it makes it even better.
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Not to mention generating 98% our electricity from renewable resources.
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
And also the Norweigan government created a sovereign wealth fund while the British government used the North Sea as a magic money tree to subsidise mass unemployment and the loss of industry.
It's a lot easier to produce a sovereign wealth fund when you have more oil, and fewer people.
I note that those left-of-centre commentators who were so critical of Johnson and the London govt and laudatory of the administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff for their respective Covid responses have gone quiet of late.
Much as I am loathed to defend the divisive Ms. Sturgeon, the policy to allow a free for all in travel to India from these islands was largely driven by Mr Johnson, allegedly so that he could cultivate a trade deal with India. Ms Sturgeon, it could be argued, has clearly been pretty crap at managing the fallout from that.
7.7% of UK cases, 7% of UK deaths - Scotland is still slightly better, albeit not good in absolute terms.
English tourism to Scotland being the unspoken cause of the big spike in places that English "staycation" tourists have gone to.
So the Scottish Covid rate is 2.5x England's because some dirty English gave it to you.
Hasn't taken long for you to pick up a rather bad case of Xenophobia from the local Nits.
Hardly. Compare and contrast Highland's case numbers when tourism wasn't allowed vs now when it is allowed. "It isn't schools" people said "as the spike started before Scottish schools went back". True - the spike fits the timing of staycationers flooding in. As it has done in Cornwall.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
Yes, since the priority was a trade deal suitable for GB.
The turmoil in NI was a price worth paying to get the English what they wanted.
Now they can go back and sort out NI.
You are an English nationalist so from an England-only perspective I totally get your perspective.
Worzel is PM of the United Kingdom though. He is supposed to consider the interests of the union (and said so at the DUP conference...) and having considered them decided to rip them up.
For a Conservative and Unionist PM it was extraordinary behaviour. And as I have said repeatedly the dismissal of the smaller nation and the union itself will be replayed endlessly north of the wall as the long campaign for the independence referendum finally shifts into the actual short campaign.
If Boris didn't care about NI he would have imposed a hard border in Ireland and taken the whole UK to No Deal.
The only other alternative was to keep the whole UK aligned to the single market and customs union which obviously would have meant no Tory majority in 2019 and Brexit would still not have been done as Farage and the BXP would still have split the Leave vote.
There will of course be no independence referendum allowed under this Tory government anyway
It's at times like these I feel as though I should have listened to my dad and supported India.
Supporting England shows we're not glory hunters.
At least I've had the England rugby union and Liverpool to give me joy.
A England cricket fan and a Spurs fan over the last 30/40 years cannot have been much fun.
I think failing to shut down the Indian first innings for say 150 and leaving 50-80 runs out there on the the second (Moeen, Pope) have ultimately cost the match. No disgrace - India are a very good side, and fought superbly back from 122 for 7 on Thursday.
If you have a lead of 100 on first innings and score 200 in the final innings, you ought to be win the match 99% of the time. No excuse for letting the opposition get nearly 500 in the 3rd innings of the game.
The slightly interesting suggestion that David Frost made in his speech last week is that there is a Valley of Death in Brexit (my term obviously, he calls it "a necessary gateway through which this country had to pass in order to give us freedom"). Things have to get worse before they get better - you lose freedom before you gain it with consequences of a liberalised economy, genuine political choice and free of the distortions of EU membership.
But suppose none of those things really happen? Brexit goes into the Valley of Death and dies?
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
And also the Norweigan government created a sovereign wealth fund while the British government used the North Sea as a magic money tree to subsidise mass unemployment and the loss of industry.
That is a genuinely stupid way to look at it. The UK used the money to pay for an economic transformation that was coming whether we had the oil money or not. You really think we would still have all those coal mines and ship yards and steel mills if we hadn't had the oil money? You think somehow if we had used that money differently the rest of the world would have decided to carry on buying British steel or ships out of sympathy?
I note that those left-of-centre commentators who were so critical of Johnson and the London govt and laudatory of the administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff for their respective Covid responses have gone quiet of late.
Much as I am loathed to defend the divisive Ms. Sturgeon, the policy to allow a free for all in travel to India from these islands was largely driven by Mr Johnson, allegedly so that he could cultivate a trade deal with India. Ms Sturgeon, it could be argued, has clearly been pretty crap at managing the fallout from that.
7.7% of UK cases, 7% of UK deaths - Scotland is still slightly better, albeit not good in absolute terms.
English tourism to Scotland being the unspoken cause of the big spike in places that English "staycation" tourists have gone to.
So the Scottish Covid rate is 2.5x England's because some dirty English gave it to you.
Hasn't taken long for you to pick up a rather bad case of Xenophobia from the local Nits.
Hardly. Compare and contrast Highland's case numbers when tourism wasn't allowed vs now when it is allowed. "It isn't schools" people said "as the spike started before Scottish schools went back". True - the spike fits the timing of staycationers flooding in. As it has done in Cornwall.
Must just be nice clean Scottish tourists in the lake district then where cases are in line with English average, less than half their Scottish betters.
It's at times like these I feel as though I should have listened to my dad and supported India.
Supporting England shows we're not glory hunters.
At least I've had the England rugby union and Liverpool to give me joy.
A England cricket fan and a Spurs fan over the last 30/40 years cannot have been much fun.
I think failing to shut down the Indian first innings for say 150 and leaving 50-80 runs out there on the the second (Moeen, Pope) have ultimately cost the match. No disgrace - India are a very good side, and fought superbly back from 122 for 7 on Thursday.
It was the day 3/4 India batting that has won this. On the same track the Indian bowlers are getting so much more out of it. We're missing Archer or Wood. If the ball isn't swinging then our attack is nowhere with this line up, there's no one in there to menace the batsmen and make them play. Yesterday the India batsmen just sat comfortably at the crease eking out 2-4 per over building a lead they knew wasn't going to be challenged. Not a single bowler posed any difficult questions because it wasn't swinging.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
I 100% hand on heart believe every word of it.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
Ok, so if that's true it means the world is laughing at you. OTOH if it isn't true it means you're laughing at the world. I'm still wondering which it is. As all know I pride myself on being able to detect whether a PB poster is being sincere or is yanking the communal chain. Here, however, with you and this ridiculously rosy view of Johnson's Brexit shenanigans, I confess to some doubt. On balance I think you're telling the truth and do genuinely believe what you're saying, but it's a marginal assessment, wouldn't shock me one iota if I'm wrong. Intriguing situation we find ourselves in. Also slightly uncomfortable.
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
And also the Norweigan government created a sovereign wealth fund while the British government used the North Sea as a magic money tree to subsidise mass unemployment and the loss of industry.
It's a lot easier to produce a sovereign wealth fund when you have more oil, and fewer people.
True but Norwegians have this national characteristic of self discipline and self-denial. There multiple squandered wealth funds out there where populations have been small and resources many.
It's at times like these I feel as though I should have listened to my dad and supported India.
Supporting England shows we're not glory hunters.
At least I've had the England rugby union and Liverpool to give me joy.
A England cricket fan and a Spurs fan over the last 30/40 years cannot have been much fun.
I think failing to shut down the Indian first innings for say 150 and leaving 50-80 runs out there on the the second (Moeen, Pope) have ultimately cost the match. No disgrace - India are a very good side, and fought superbly back from 122 for 7 on Thursday.
It was the day 3/4 India batting that has won this. On the same track the Indian bowlers are getting so much more out of it. We're missing Archer or Wood. If the ball isn't swinging then our attack is nowhere with this line up, there's no one in there to menace the batsmen and make them play. Yesterday the India batsmen just sat comfortably at the crease eking out 2-4 per over building a lead they knew wasn't going to be challenged. Not a single bowler posed any difficult questions because it wasn't swinging.
Rory Burns standing in the slips in to a setting sun without shades and then acting like it's not his fault when he ignores a regulation slip catch off a bloke who then scores a hundred was pretty damning to our efforts.
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
And also the Norweigan government created a sovereign wealth fund while the British government used the North Sea as a magic money tree to subsidise mass unemployment and the loss of industry.
It's a lot easier to produce a sovereign wealth fund when you have more oil, and fewer people.
Like Scotland? If only the Scots Nats had a working time machine.
Back in the real world, oil revenues were spent on mass unemployment created by the government's economic and industrial policies.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
There certainly needs to be a certain amount of persuasion of the Great British Public that this is a triumph that will become an even greater one:
Latest @YouGov@thetimes poll. In hindsight #Brexit right 39 (-2); wrong 48 (+1). Fwork 2-3.9 (ch since 25-26.8). Largest lead of wrong over right since Dec. 2020.
Thinking about Brexit, which of the following comes closest to your view? We should rejoin the EU 30 % / We should remain outside the EU but negotiate a closer relationship with them than we have now 20 % / We should remain outside the EU and keep the same relationship with the EU as we have now 21 % / We should remain outside the EU and negotiate a more distant relationship with them than we have now 18 %
Now, there's no meaningful mandate to change direction in any of those figures. But the crowd (who, even when they're not wise, need to be treated as such) aren't seeing it as a triumph, either.
That second question shows why the referendum refuseniks were so desperate for another go with Remain being put up against lots of different versions of Leave
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
And also the Norweigan government created a sovereign wealth fund while the British government used the North Sea as a magic money tree to subsidise mass unemployment and the loss of industry.
That is a genuinely stupid way to look at it. The UK used the money to pay for an economic transformation that was coming whether we had the oil money or not. You really think we would still have all those coal mines and ship yards and steel mills if we hadn't had the oil money? You think somehow if we had used that money differently the rest of the world would have decided to carry on buying British steel or ships out of sympathy?
You got five likes at the time of writing for a defence even Mrs Thatcher never used at the time.
I note that those left-of-centre commentators who were so critical of Johnson and the London govt and laudatory of the administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff for their respective Covid responses have gone quiet of late.
Much as I am loathed to defend the divisive Ms. Sturgeon, the policy to allow a free for all in travel to India from these islands was largely driven by Mr Johnson, allegedly so that he could cultivate a trade deal with India. Ms Sturgeon, it could be argued, has clearly been pretty crap at managing the fallout from that.
7.7% of UK cases, 7% of UK deaths - Scotland is still slightly better, albeit not good in absolute terms.
English tourism to Scotland being the unspoken cause of the big spike in places that English "staycation" tourists have gone to.
So the Scottish Covid rate is 2.5x England's because some dirty English gave it to you.
Hasn't taken long for you to pick up a rather bad case of Xenophobia from the local Nits.
Hardly. Compare and contrast Highland's case numbers when tourism wasn't allowed vs now when it is allowed. "It isn't schools" people said "as the spike started before Scottish schools went back". True - the spike fits the timing of staycationers flooding in. As it has done in Cornwall.
Must just be nice clean Scottish tourists in the lake district then where cases are in line with English average, less than half their Scottish betters.
Also the schools factor has to be modified because the testing requested by schools began a few days before the actual return.
If you have a lead of 100 on first innings and score 200 in the final innings, you ought to be win the match 99% of the time. No excuse for letting the opposition get nearly 500 in the 3rd innings of the game.
That is a way of looking at it - and it's not a bad one.
It is worth noting that the UK was never a particularly big oil exporter. Indeed, even as North Sea oil took off in the 1970s, the UK remained an importer right through until '80/'81. There were then a few great years in the mid-80s, before production came down sharply in the late 80s, early '90s.
The biggest impact of North Sea oil was on the UK's balance of payments. We went from importing close to two millions barrels of oil a day in the mid 70s (taking up almost 3% of UK GDP), to exporting 0.5 million barrels. Roughly translated, between 1978 and 1987, it probably added 0.3-0.5% to UK economic growth, solely off the net imports line.
Still: even if you add up the value of all the oil produced (and completely ignore the fact that it cost a lot of money to exrtact), you probably get to a number of one fifteen the level of Norway's relative to GDP. Simply, oil was great for the UK, but it was (proportionately) much smaller relative to GDP.
Final point: if you think the UK should have spent less money in the 80s and 90s, or increased taxes, that's fine. But when you say "we should have taken the money that arrived in taxation from oil and used it for a sovereign wealth fund", you are implicitly saying it should not have been spent on other things. (Or you are saying that somehow the paying down of the UK's national debt, as happened in the era, does not could as a SWF.)
I note that those left-of-centre commentators who were so critical of Johnson and the London govt and laudatory of the administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff for their respective Covid responses have gone quiet of late.
Much as I am loathed to defend the divisive Ms. Sturgeon, the policy to allow a free for all in travel to India from these islands was largely driven by Mr Johnson, allegedly so that he could cultivate a trade deal with India. Ms Sturgeon, it could be argued, has clearly been pretty crap at managing the fallout from that.
7.7% of UK cases, 7% of UK deaths - Scotland is still slightly better, albeit not good in absolute terms.
English tourism to Scotland being the unspoken cause of the big spike in places that English "staycation" tourists have gone to.
So the Scottish Covid rate is 2.5x England's because some dirty English gave it to you.
Hasn't taken long for you to pick up a rather bad case of Xenophobia from the local Nits.
Hardly. Compare and contrast Highland's case numbers when tourism wasn't allowed vs now when it is allowed. "It isn't schools" people said "as the spike started before Scottish schools went back". True - the spike fits the timing of staycationers flooding in. As it has done in Cornwall.
Must just be nice clean Scottish tourists in the lake district then where cases are in line with English average, less than half their Scottish betters.
Also the schools factor has to be modified because the testing requested by schools began a few days before the actual return.
As seen with previous school returns in England and Wales, earlier in the epidemic, as well.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
If you truly believe this everybody (including "Boris") is laughing their socks off at you. But if you don't believe it, ie you're taking the piss, you (and of course "Boris") are laughing at us. I wonder which it is?
I 100% hand on heart believe every word of it.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
Ok, so if that's true it means the world is laughing at you. OTOH if it isn't true it means you're laughing at the world. I'm still wondering which it is. As all know I pride myself on being able to detect whether a PB poster is being sincere or is yanking the communal chain. Here, however, with you and this ridiculously rosy view of Johnson's Brexit shenanigans, I confess to some doubt. On balance I think you're telling the truth and do genuinely believe what you're saying, but it's a marginal assessment, wouldn't shock me one iota if I'm wrong. Intriguing situation we find ourselves in. Also slightly uncomfortable.
No laughter. Indeed others have (perfectly reasonably) pointed out that its only my willingness to put England first before Northern Ireland that means I can take my view. But having done that, my view is entirely reasonable and no laughing matter.
I don't see any shenanigans like you do. I see Britain having moved on from the quagmire of a mess that we'd found ourselves in under May's failed stewardship.
Sure matters are worse for Northern Ireland right now. Sucks to be them. But its better for England and England > Northern Ireland.
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
And also the Norweigan government created a sovereign wealth fund while the British government used the North Sea as a magic money tree to subsidise mass unemployment and the loss of industry.
That is a genuinely stupid way to look at it. The UK used the money to pay for an economic transformation that was coming whether we had the oil money or not. You really think we would still have all those coal mines and ship yards and steel mills if we hadn't had the oil money? You think somehow if we had used that money differently the rest of the world would have decided to carry on buying British steel or ships out of sympathy?
You got five likes at the time of writing for a defence even Mrs Thatcher never used at the time.
I didn't "like" it. I'd have pressed the "come off it, Richard, we weren't born yesterday" button if there was one.
Last week was a bank holiday though. Plus there were 1M tests yesterday compared to 700K the week before - a 46% increase. That's a decline in positivity. Schools going back are going to see lots more testing and therefore lots more cases.
Before @Andy_JS beats me to it - the latest INSA poll in Germany now out:
Changes from last poll - fieldwork 3-6 September
Social Democrats: 26% (+1) Union CDU/CSU: 20.5% (+0.5) Greens: 15.5% (-1) Free Democrats: 12.5% (-1) Alternative for Germany: 11% Linke: 6.5% (-0.5) Free Voters: 3% (new)
There are 30 minor parties (of which the most significant is/are the Free Voters) standing in the election. It's still a long way from the FW getting any seats.
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
The Norwegians managed it much better.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
And also the Norweigan government created a sovereign wealth fund while the British government used the North Sea as a magic money tree to subsidise mass unemployment and the loss of industry.
It's a lot easier to produce a sovereign wealth fund when you have more oil, and fewer people.
Norway made sure the resources benefitted its population and largely developed them using state-owned companies... the UK left it up to private companies, and didn't negotiate a good deal. This analysis reckons UK missed out on hundreds of billions of revenue.
It is worth noting that the UK was never a particularly big oil exporter. Indeed, even as North Sea oil took off in the 1970s, the UK remained an importer right through until '80/'81. There were then a few great years in the mid-80s, before production came down sharply in the late 80s, early '90s.
The biggest impact of North Sea oil was on the UK's balance of payments. We went from importing close to two millions barrels of oil a day in the mid 70s (taking up almost 3% of UK GDP), to exporting 0.5 million barrels. Roughly translated, between 1978 and 1987, it probably added 0.3-0.5% to UK economic growth, solely off the net imports line.
Still: even if you add up the value of all the oil produced (and completely ignore the fact that it cost a lot of money to exrtact), you probably get to a number of one fifteen the level of Norway's relative to GDP. Simply, oil was great for the UK, but it was (proportionately) much smaller relative to GDP.
Final point: if you think the UK should have spent less money in the 80s and 90s, or increased taxes, that's fine. But when you say "we should have taken the money that arrived in taxation from oil and used it for a sovereign wealth fund", you are implicitly saying it should not have been spent on other things. (Or you are saying that somehow the paying down of the UK's national debt, as happened in the era, does not could as a SWF.)
Just reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Who Dares Wins" about the UK in 1979-82. One of the points he makes is that, in the early 1980s, the UK was effectively seen as a petro-currency, which caused upwards pressure on the pound and exacerbated the recession.
Entirely predictable move to kick the intra-Irish border fuckup into the grass again. We keep waiting for the EU to compromise the external EEA border. It doesn't.
Is it not compromised at the moment?
No more than usual. We are *aligned* to the EEA so allowing ever-decreasing volumes of stuff across with minimal checks is no threat.
As we are pledged to not lower things like food standards we could have agreed an actual free trade deal. But no, we want to be a 3rd country and then complain about what that means in practice.
We have agreed an actual free trade deal.
I have no qualms with us being a third country. If they wish to impose checks at our countries border that's their choice, but they don't want to. That's their problem, they should solve it.
It'd the kind of "free trade" that the right have campaigned against for decades - slow, costly, red-tape heavy. As for checks I don't think the EEA side are that bothered. If sales to the GB drop they have the rest of the market to sell to. It is our problem, not theirs.
Anyway you should be pleased! The Lord Brexiteer is once again threatening to trigger A16 and blow up the deal. Which you have assured me is the point where it starts to work. So a solution is at hand is it not...
Article 16 is part of the deal, so why do you think using it for the purpose for which it is intended would blow it up?
Unlike UVDL unilaterally invoking Article 16 at night with zero notice, not even discussing it with Dublin first . . . Frost has been laying the groundwork for potentially invoking Article 16 for many months now.
He said to Parliament, to the EU and in public repeatedly that the threshold for invocation is met but he wishes to try other solutions first. If the other solutions fail, there can be no objection to invocation happening. Its not like they haven't been warned that the threshold for invoking it had been met already.
And when that happens - as it almost certainly will - the EU will respond by imposing trade sanctions of its choice on us. There are no wins here, Phil. Just further isolation for the UK.
Since Article 16 is a legitimate part of the Treaty to be exercised, the EU are actually quite limited in what responses they can have within the confines of the Treaty.
Unless they wish to break the Treaty, which A16 doesn't do.
Responses to what is considered an unreasonable invocation are also a legitimate part of the Treaty.
But its not unreasonable.
Nobody is even arguing with Frost that the conditions to invoke it have been met. Are you denying that they have?
The conditions to invoke it are quite explicit and they've quite clearly been met.
The unreasonableness, or not, will ultimately be decided by the dispute resolution process if the parties do not agree. Invoking Article 16 also covers a multitude of actions - from the relatively minor to the nuclear. Let's see what happens. As I say, the idea that there are pain-free ways for Johnson and Frost to undo the mess they have created is for the fairies.
Frost and Johnson didn't create the mess.
May and Barnier created the mess by going arse about tit and choosing to "sort out" the Northern Ireland issue before the future of UK/EU trading relationship was sorted. Which was an impossibility that got us bogged down in a horrendous mess.
Johnson and Frost sorted out 97% of the mess by sorting out the UK and EU's trading relationship first which is what should have happened all along.
Now they're going back to sort out the final 3% as the last part of the negotiations. As they should have always been, instead of the first.
No, Phil, Frost and Johnson signed up to a deal they did not understand or never meant to honour. They put a customs border in the Irish Sea. They told us it was a triumph. You are the only person in the world who still believes it was.
It was a triumph.
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad." :-D
I'm right though aren't I? Pick one sentence in that which is wrong and explain why please.
"It was a triumph."
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
Of course you do, if you can get an even bigger triumph!
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
The government did not negotiate a pay rise. It negotiated a customs border in the Irish Sea. One that has caused considerable turmoil in Northern Ireland. Did the government want 97% of that turmoil, Phil?
There certainly needs to be a certain amount of persuasion of the Great British Public that this is a triumph that will become an even greater one:
Latest @YouGov@thetimes poll. In hindsight #Brexit right 39 (-2); wrong 48 (+1). Fwork 2-3.9 (ch since 25-26.8). Largest lead of wrong over right since Dec. 2020.
Thinking about Brexit, which of the following comes closest to your view? We should rejoin the EU 30 % / We should remain outside the EU but negotiate a closer relationship with them than we have now 20 % / We should remain outside the EU and keep the same relationship with the EU as we have now 21 % / We should remain outside the EU and negotiate a more distant relationship with them than we have now 18 %
Now, there's no meaningful mandate to change direction in any of those figures. But the crowd (who, even when they're not wise, need to be treated as such) aren't seeing it as a triumph, either.
That second question shows why the referendum refuseniks were so desperate for another go with Remain being put up against lots of different versions of Leave
I have a sneaky feeling that if Mrs May had put her deal to the public (versus Remain) and got Johnson/Gove on board to campaign for it, it would have passed.
RIP. I cannot help but think that this is a form of torture, both for the poor man and his family. 39 years in a PVS.
Indeed. A terrible story.
It is why I believe in such cases that, if the doctors do not believe in a chance of recovery, we should given such a people a lethal injection to get things over with as quickly as possible. This whole "let's withdraw life support" is cowardice, knowing the person will die but not having the guts to make explicit what is implicit. Nobody knows what happens with people in a PVS state and what they do / do not feel and how much they may be suffering if life support is turned off.
Aren’t younger people are paying for their own future social care via the NI rise?
It’s a tricky issue obviously, instinctively I thought older people should use equity from their home to pay for it if possible, but we don’t ask them to do that for any other disease, so maybe that’s wrong.
When I were a lad there was a hospital for older people/gentlefolk 100 yards from my house. We used to take them flowers at school. Now it’s been developed for housing. I think it should still be a hospital for gentlefolk
I believe that the problem is based on the fact that the money being contributed through NI just goes to pay the current bill, it isn't being paid in to a Nordic style wealth fund that will fund our future care and social security needs. So the situation can quickly change, and there is no guarantee that future generations will be happy to fund our later life care in the same way.
We should have emulated Norway with their national oil fund for the future.
And killed off 90% of our population to make sure it had the same per capita impact.
Even in terms of raw production, Stajtford has outproduced the entire UK's historical output so far as I can tell judging by the wiki graphs.
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
The big differences between the UK and Norway are in reserves and also in oil exports. Norway really didn't need that much of the oil and gas they produced and so were able to export it and create a huge amount of wealth as a result. They also have far larger reserves than the UK - estimated at 5.5 billion boe compared to the UK of 2.5 billion boe
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
And also the Norweigan government created a sovereign wealth fund while the British government used the North Sea as a magic money tree to subsidise mass unemployment and the loss of industry.
That is a genuinely stupid way to look at it. The UK used the money to pay for an economic transformation that was coming whether we had the oil money or not. You really think we would still have all those coal mines and ship yards and steel mills if we hadn't had the oil money? You think somehow if we had used that money differently the rest of the world would have decided to carry on buying British steel or ships out of sympathy?
You got five likes at the time of writing for a defence even Mrs Thatcher never used at the time.
I didn't "like" it. I'd have pressed the "come off it, Richard, we weren't born yesterday" button if there was one.
Before @Andy_JS beats me to it - the latest INSA poll in Germany now out:
Changes from last poll - fieldwork 3-6 September
Social Democrats: 26% (+1) Union CDU/CSU: 20.5% (+0.5) Greens: 15.5% (-1) Free Democrats: 12.5% (-1) Alternative for Germany: 11% Linke: 6.5% (-0.5) Free Voters: 3% (new)
There are 30 minor parties (of which the most significant is/are the Free Voters) standing in the election. It's still a long way from the FW getting any seats.
Round here there’s also some sort of right wing ecology type party - environment, family and the national kind of stuff - who have a lot of posters up (all posters here seem to be on lampposts rather than houses so presumably come down to money), but they weren’t doing a market stall yesterday.
Comments
No I am not being pedantic. As usual you quote some stat and misuse it and produce erroneous stuff that you call facts and which aren't.
Go on do it, say you were wrong. I bet you can't. Both Philip and I acknowledge our missing the salary average issue. See if you can do the same. bet you can't
Just joshing with you.
https://trib.al/tYDUOjq
If sanctions are imposed, we’ll have to respond with appropriate measures….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3BO6GP9NMY
The reasons are thus:
spectacular long term planning rather than focusing on the short term
excellent history of achieving his objectives
solving the energy crisis due to unlimited power
top political tipster - everything proceeds as he foresees
promoter of equal opportunities - his second in command is a disabled war veteran from a minority religion who is both black and white
They got Brexit done dealing with GB which is 97% of the United Kingdom and 100% of the seats their MPs represent. They got done what May couldn't.
As for not honouring the deal, they are honouring it in full. The deal literally had a get-out clause within it saying it didn't need to be applied in full if it created problems, and the problems were foreseeable, so it was entirely foreseeable the get-out clause could be invoked. Invoking a get-out clause you and the other party agreed in the negotiations is not failing to honour the deal.
The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog. It isn't anymore, Johnson put paid to that nonsense and now proper negotiations can begin afresh as should have always happened in a logical order of events.
No excusing it.
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/01/north-sea-oil-a-tale-of-two-countries/
The UK and Norway both began offshore exploration and production in the mid-1960s with the first oil discoveries made in 1969. Since then, both countries have produced similar amounts of hydrocarbons: the UK has produced 42.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and Norway 40 billion boe.
This ties my preconception that it's a roughly 50:50 split. I think certain posters have previously told stories about how the UK would have had much more if not for a certain long lunch at the end of the negotiations.
"The Northern Irish tail should never have been allowed to wag the British dog."
@Selebian
Thanks for the tip. I've backed No at 3.9. I too would have No as favourite.
Because the government says it now has to be renegotiated. You do not renegotiate triumphs.
They sorted out 97% as they wanted last year, and are now going back to get the other 3%.
If you negotiate a 97% payrise in one year then that's a triumph isn't it? If you then go back the following year to negotiate a further 3% real terms payrise the following year does that diminish your prior triumph? Or build on it?
'Because the Badgers are moving the
goalposts.
The Ferrets are bending the rules. [...]'
I wonder how much longer it will be before the engineering solution for the bridge to Ireland is admitted to be the same as that for the Garden Bridge?
The turmoil in NI was a price worth paying to get the English what they wanted.
Now they can go back and sort out NI.
Latest @YouGov @thetimes poll. In hindsight #Brexit right 39 (-2); wrong 48 (+1). Fwork 2-3.9 (ch since 25-26.8). Largest lead of wrong over right since Dec. 2020.
https://twitter.com/whatukthinks/status/1434845560880734212?s=20
Thinking about Brexit, which of the following comes closest to your view?
We should rejoin the EU 30 % / We should remain outside the EU but negotiate a closer relationship with them than we have now 20 % / We should remain outside the EU and keep the same relationship with the EU as we have now 21 % / We should remain outside the EU and negotiate a more distant relationship with them than we have now 18 %
https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/should-britain-rejoin-the-eu-remain-outside-but-negotiate-a-closer-relationship-remain-outside-with-the-same-relationship-as-now-or-remain-outside-and-negotiate-a-more-distant-relationship/
Now, there's no meaningful mandate to change direction in any of those figures. But the crowd (who, even when they're not wise, need to be treated as such) aren't seeing it as a triumph, either.
So I have no qualms saying that.
Worzel is PM of the United Kingdom though. He is supposed to consider the interests of the union (and said so at the DUP conference...) and having considered them decided to rip them up.
For a Conservative and Unionist PM it was extraordinary behaviour. And as I have said repeatedly the dismissal of the smaller nation and the union itself will be replayed endlessly north of the wall as the long campaign for the independence referendum finally shifts into the actual short campaign.
Its NI voters that have estranged NI politics from British politics, not Boris. Boris has done the right thing by his MPs and his voters.
When Root succeeds England fails.
As an aside, the ill fated Pipe Alpha platform still holds the world record for the most oil produced from its own wells in a 24 hour period - 324,000 barrels.
Unless you come from a perspective that NI should be treated as equally as England in the negotiations (which I don't), how is any of what I said laughable?
*cough*
Senior ECB executives to share £2.1m bonus despite Covid job cuts
Tom Harrison and a group of senior executives at the England and Wales Cricket Board are poised to share a projected £2.1m bonus pot despite making 62 job cuts last year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/23/senior-ecb-executives-to-share-21m-bonus-despite-covid-job-cuts
At least I've had the England rugby union and Liverpool to give me joy.
A England cricket fan and a Spurs fan over the last 30/40 years cannot have been much fun.
Hasn't taken long for you to pick up a rather bad case of Xenophobia from the local Nits.
Indeed, England cricket, England football, Spurs. Not been a great sporting life for me, still when we do win something like the cricket WC it makes it even better.
The only other alternative was to keep the whole UK aligned to the single market and customs union which obviously would have meant no Tory majority in 2019 and Brexit would still not have been done as Farage and the BXP would still have split the Leave vote.
There will of course be no independence referendum allowed under this Tory government anyway
But suppose none of those things really happen? Brexit goes into the Valley of Death and dies?
Which I think is likely.
Back in the real world, oil revenues were spent on mass unemployment created by the government's economic and industrial policies.
It’s perfect then. Votes for the party remain intact.
"Jean-Pierre Adams: Former France international dies after 39 years in coma"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/58463792
RIP. I cannot help but think that this is a form of torture, both for the poor man and his family. 39 years in a PVS.
The biggest impact of North Sea oil was on the UK's balance of payments. We went from importing close to two millions barrels of oil a day in the mid 70s (taking up almost 3% of UK GDP), to exporting 0.5 million barrels. Roughly translated, between 1978 and 1987, it probably added 0.3-0.5% to UK economic growth, solely off the net imports line.
Still: even if you add up the value of all the oil produced (and completely ignore the fact that it cost a lot of money to exrtact), you probably get to a number of one fifteen the level of Norway's relative to GDP. Simply, oil was great for the UK, but it was (proportionately) much smaller relative to GDP.
Final point: if you think the UK should have spent less money in the 80s and 90s, or increased taxes, that's fine. But when you say "we should have taken the money that arrived in taxation from oil and used it for a sovereign wealth fund", you are implicitly saying it should not have been spent on other things. (Or you are saying that somehow the paying down of the UK's national debt, as happened in the era, does not could as a SWF.)
I don't see any shenanigans like you do. I see Britain having moved on from the quagmire of a mess that we'd found ourselves in under May's failed stewardship.
Sure matters are worse for Northern Ireland right now. Sucks to be them. But its better for England and England > Northern Ireland.
Changes from last poll - fieldwork 3-6 September
Social Democrats: 26% (+1)
Union CDU/CSU: 20.5% (+0.5)
Greens: 15.5% (-1)
Free Democrats: 12.5% (-1)
Alternative for Germany: 11%
Linke: 6.5% (-0.5)
Free Voters: 3% (new)
There are 30 minor parties (of which the most significant is/are the Free Voters) standing in the election. It's still a long way from the FW getting any seats.
https://resourcegovernance.org/blog/did-uk-miss-out-£400-billion-worth-oil-revenue
It is why I believe in such cases that, if the doctors do not believe in a chance of recovery, we should given such a people a lethal injection to get things over with as quickly as possible. This whole "let's withdraw life support" is cowardice, knowing the person will die but not having the guts to make explicit what is implicit. Nobody knows what happens with people in a PVS state and what they do / do not feel and how much they may be suffering if life support is turned off.
Still only 8 down though. Thoughts hark back to the famous "Panesar draw" in the Ashes a few years ago.