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.
I love the Sandbrook books, but I think that analysis was a little simplistic. There were a whole host of different factors driving Sterling at the time:
(1) Howe and Lawson were closing the deficit through raising taxes (not something anyone remembers!) (2) The government signalled that it was making inflation a bigger priority, and raising interest rates in 1979 and 1980. (3) The impact of rising oil production on the UK Balance of Payments
It's well worth reading The View from Number Eleven by Lawson on the period. It's probably the best "in the trenches" look at the decisions policy makers had to make from 1979 through to 1990.
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.
A second referendum was never going to happen because it stopped being a binary question.
What would opposing May's Deal have meant - more negotiation, leaving without a Deal, another referendum on membership?
The original referendum was superficially a clear binary question - we either remained in the EU or we left the EU, simple as that (though not obviously).
Had you had a "Deal" question, you would have needed to spell out what rejecting the Deal meant and it might have meant different things to different people. If May had said, for example, rejecting her Deal meant leaving without a Deal, somebody would have had to explain what that meant.
As soon as we voted to Leave, we were leaving under whatever terms the Government could obtain - good or bad.
None of that binds a future elected Government and if a Party were to win an election on, for example, seeking negotiations to rejoin the European Union, that would be democratically credible and a mandate would exist for that to happen.
The number I'm tracking closely is those in hospital in Scotland. Currently 771, doubled in about 2 weeks & 38% of previous peak. It's really taken off since schools went back.
England by contrast is at a much lower 19% of previous peak.
Possibly England will be different, I think probably more people are vaccinated than at comparable point in Scotland & probably more people have had the disease... but still think England has a lot more hospitalization burden to come.
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.
The Social Democrats were marooned on about 15% until just a few weeks ago.
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.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
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.
Not other Scots visiting from areas with much higher incidence than any in England?
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.
There is laughter but we don't know which way it's flowing, is where we are. You remember the PB Panel of Moderates which in order to ensure independence and objectivity neither you nor I are on? Well that is unanimous (10/0) that Johnson either (i) didn't understand the deal or (ii) did and always intended to renege on it. They are the only 2 possibilities within the boundaries of rational discussion, slapdash or bad faith, and the POM delivered a 5/5 split verdict. It would have been 5/6 in favour of bad faith, btw, if I'd have had a vote. I think old "Boris" legged the EU over.
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.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
Not really true. Sure, HMG held a 51% shareholding at that time and nominated two Directors, but that was the extent of involvement. BP was always treated as an independent private company.
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.
A second referendum was never going to happen because it stopped being a binary question.
What would opposing May's Deal have meant - more negotiation, leaving without a Deal, another referendum on membership?
The original referendum was superficially a clear binary question - we either remained in the EU or we left the EU, simple as that (though not obviously).
Had you had a "Deal" question, you would have needed to spell out what rejecting the Deal meant and it might have meant different things to different people. If May had said, for example, rejecting her Deal meant leaving without a Deal, somebody would have had to explain what that meant.
As soon as we voted to Leave, we were leaving under whatever terms the Government could obtain - good or bad.
None of that binds a future elected Government and if a Party were to win an election on, for example, seeking negotiations to rejoin the European Union, that would be democratically credible and a mandate would exist for that to happen.
I said versus Remain so that is binary - but 100% agreed that a 2nd Ref of any formulation was never a realistic possibility.
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'm not saying Britain should have created a sovereign wealth fund but observing that it is an argument for retrospective Scottish independence. Mrs Thatcher's economic miracle, while it did permanently transform the country, arguably for the better, was underwritten by a magic money tree. Or if you prefer, oil money was spaffed up the wall paying off the dole queues created by the government's bare knuckle fight with British industry. (Oh, and Mrs T also was largely responsible for the European single market, which seems to have fallen out of favour among many self-styled Thatcherites.)
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.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
Not really true. Sure, HMG held a 51% shareholding at that time and nominated two Directors, but that was the extent of involvement. BP was always treated as an independent private company.
As was Statoil to a large extent. And it is worth pointing out that although the licencing system gave Statoil (and still gives to Equinor its successor) all the best acreage which was most likely to succeed, it was private companies from the very start who did all the hard work and continue to do so with the main exploration and marginal development projects.
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.
Why should she say it at the time. Telling people your plan is to manage the end of their way of life is never a great vote winner. Doesn't mean it wasn't exactly what they were doing and all the better for 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.
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.
I agree the EU hand isn't particularly strong on the NIP. It has nuclear options, which would ultimately prevail, but as long as it doesn't want to use those, there's not a lot it can do about the UK failing to implement the NIP. Which is where the risk from the EU perspective. A16 doesn't solve anything for the UK and is a red herring here.
My guess is that the UK will stall on implementation and the EU will refuse to concede the principle for some time to come. The risk is that an EU enterprise goes to court on the grounds that UK goods have unfair or uncontrolled access to the Single Market via NI. The EU Commission will have to act at that point.
The number I'm tracking closely is those in hospital in Scotland. Currently 771, doubled in about 2 weeks & 38% of previous peak. It's really taken off since schools went back.
England by contrast is at a much lower 19% of previous peak.
Possibly England will be different, I think probably more people are vaccinated than at comparable point in Scotland & probably more people have had the disease... but still think England has a lot more hospitalization burden to come.
Yes the Scotland hospitalisation surge is a bit scary. Of course hopsitalisation has the old With/of Covid problem but Mechanical ventilation numbers are also rising strongly in Scotland and my contention is there is any with/of issues with that figure. A ventilated person with Covid is almost certainly on the ventilator because of Covid.
Peak day this year for Scotland was 161 in January, currently it is at at 71 which is rapidly closing in on 50% peak level.
England ventilator peak was an eye watering 3736 (more than double Scotland's peak figure on a per capita basis), currently 909 (which is higher the Scotland's currently surging figure).
I've always contended that the unarguable "are we in the shit" figure is ventilator usage.
Testing increased from the end of last week. Really no surprise, but awaits Prof Peston for confirmation that in fact, everyone in the UK died last week, or something.
Ok, this is weird. It goes totally against the grain. It feels somehow dirty.
But….
Hyufd is right on the original scope of NI in 1908 and you are wrong. It did originally included sick pay and medical cover as well. In fact, it wasn’t until quite a bit later that it was linked to old age pensions, which were originally decided by age not by contributions history.
The changes that brought NI into the form we know it today date from the 1940s.
Comments
(1) Howe and Lawson were closing the deficit through raising taxes (not something anyone remembers!)
(2) The government signalled that it was making inflation a bigger priority, and raising interest rates in 1979 and 1980.
(3) The impact of rising oil production on the UK Balance of Payments
It's well worth reading The View from Number Eleven by Lawson on the period. It's probably the best "in the trenches" look at the decisions policy makers had to make from 1979 through to 1990.
What would opposing May's Deal have meant - more negotiation, leaving without a Deal, another referendum on membership?
The original referendum was superficially a clear binary question - we either remained in the EU or we left the EU, simple as that (though not obviously).
Had you had a "Deal" question, you would have needed to spell out what rejecting the Deal meant and it might have meant different things to different people. If May had said, for example, rejecting her Deal meant leaving without a Deal, somebody would have had to explain what that meant.
As soon as we voted to Leave, we were leaving under whatever terms the Government could obtain - good or bad.
None of that binds a future elected Government and if a Party were to win an election on, for example, seeking negotiations to rejoin the European Union, that would be democratically credible and a mandate would exist for that to happen.
England by contrast is at a much lower 19% of previous peak.
Possibly England will be different, I think probably more people are vaccinated than at comparable point in Scotland & probably more people have had the disease... but still think England has a lot more hospitalization burden to come.
BP was state owned at the time. So the British government gained on the privatisation of BP later in the decade.
Now, it may be that the terms offered to companies for exploiting the North Sea were more favourable for the Norwegian government, but it is also worth remembering that when initial licenses were being auctioned, no-one was really sure it was going to work. The UK Continental Shelf Act was in 1963/64 and then there were a succession of dry holes. I forget the actual number, but I think of the first 48 or 49 wells drilled in the North Sea, none found oil. (Although a few found gas, which at the time was massively less valuable.)
Only with Ecofisk (which was the last well Phillips petroleum was planning on drilling, so unhappy were they with the North Sea), that things were transformed.
The Norwegians were lucky. They sold licenses later. And therefore they got the benefit of people knowing that oil was there.
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My guess is that the UK will stall on implementation and the EU will refuse to concede the principle for some time to come. The risk is that an EU enterprise goes to court on the grounds that UK goods have unfair or uncontrolled access to the Single Market via NI. The EU Commission will have to act at that point.
Peak day this year for Scotland was 161 in January, currently it is at at 71 which is rapidly closing in on 50% peak level.
England ventilator peak was an eye watering 3736 (more than double Scotland's peak figure on a per capita basis), currently 909 (which is higher the Scotland's currently surging figure).
I've always contended that the unarguable "are we in the shit" figure is ventilator usage.
Ok, this is weird. It goes totally against the grain. It feels somehow dirty.
But….
Hyufd is right on the original scope of NI in 1908 and you are wrong. It did originally included sick pay and medical cover as well. In fact, it wasn’t until quite a bit later that it was linked to old age pensions, which were originally decided by age not by contributions history.
The changes that brought NI into the form we know it today date from the 1940s.