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Could Bojo be tempted to cash in on current polling by going early? – politicalbetting.com

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  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited October 2021

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    It's progress of a sort. At least the ludicrous outright denial that there were going to be any downsides at all is melting away, into a grudging admittance that Brexit is a disaster, albeit it is claimed a temporary disaster, for sectors such as haulage, agriculture, and especially fishing. It now turns out that that was part of the plan all along, just a part that they omitted to tell us (and especially the haulage industry, farmers and fishermen) about, and indeed which they sneered at as 'Project Fear'.

    Still, prodigal son and all that.
    That fine nobleman, late of this manor, SeanT, did warn us of the impending pains of Brexit, in his baby article in the Spectator


    ‘Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.’

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-brexit-is-just-like-having-a-baby
    But don't worry, 10 years later we'll largely be over the worst!
    We're already 4 years later, and still with Brexit incomplete (no incoming customs controls etc.)
    We Brexited on January 1, 2020, as Remoaners constantly pointed out in the years prior - ‘it hasn’t happened yet, just you wait’
    It's cetainly happing now, sadly.
    What's certainly happening?

    A crash? Mass unemployment?

    No, Britain is booming. We have mass vacancies, wages going up . . . when will the horrors ever end?

    As I said before, calling this a crisis is like SeanT complaining he has too many nubile young women interested in him.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,535

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    glw said:

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    No I'm saying there will be some upheaval for about ten to twenty years, I never said disaster.

    But you know what: there is always upheaval anyway. Covid brought upheaval. The GFC brought upheaval. The dotcom bubble brought upheaval. Online shopping brought upheaval.

    Brexit is just one more thing on a very, very long list of reasons that there will be disruption. But such disruption is a good thing. That's what Brown failed to understand - it is boom and bust that leads to improved development and living standards. He managed to abolish boom but not bust, its time to reverse that mistake.
    I would be astonished if come the end of the 21st century, assuming there is still a human race, that Brexit would be in the top 10 of significant things to happen to the UK. If we can't cope with leaving an overgrown trade organisation we are doomed because far bigger problems await us.
    I'll bet you £1,000 that it is.
    Interesting bet!

    Brexit is bloody big but it’s not monumental. Covid is monumental, so Brexit is already number 2 in the ‘list of significant things to happen to Britain this century’

    If Scotland had voted yes that would also have been bigger than Brexit

    We’ve got 79 years to go until 2100. If the 21st century is as eventful as the 20th then Brexit will definitely be relegated much further down the list. Let’s hope the 21st century isn’t that ‘interesting’ but the omens so far are that it will be, and might very possibly be much MORE turbulent, from global war with China to proper AI to aliens saying Hi to robots taking over to climate apocalypse to migration wars and on and on

    My guess: Brexit will probably scrape in to the top 10, but right at the bottom. Many bigger things will hit us


    Interesting thought - what are the the biggest stories/events/transformations of the 21st century so far and how would you order them?

    I would say:
    1: Covid
    2: 9/11 and war on terror
    3: The rise of online shopping/death of the high street
    4: Brexit
    5: Financial crisis

    4 & 5 might ultimately swap positions.

    #3 is probably long term the biggest thing of the last 21 years, but generally gets overlooked.
    Pah! Never mind the 21st century, what, in order of impact, are the biggest events/tranformations that affected Britain during the 2nd millennium?

    Off the top of my head, I'm thinking:

    1. The Norman Conquest (yep, even after nearly a 1000 years)
    2. The Industrial Revolution
    3. The two World Wars (got to treat them as one)
    4. The English Civil War
    5. The Reformation

    What - no room for the Empire? Printing? the Enlightenment? Who knows?
    I'd put the Empire / colonialisation above the world wars.

    The world would be very much different if the British influence was removed from North America, India etc with reverberations back to this country.
    Fair point.
  • Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    It's progress of a sort. At least the ludicrous outright denial that there were going to be any downsides at all is melting away, into a grudging admittance that Brexit is a disaster, albeit it is claimed a temporary disaster, for sectors such as haulage, agriculture, and especially fishing. It now turns out that that was part of the plan all along, just a part that they omitted to tell us (and especially the haulage industry, farmers and fishermen) about, and indeed which they sneered at as 'Project Fear'.

    Still, prodigal son and all that.
    "Project Fear" lest you forget was an immediate recession and half a million unemployed.

    Nobody would have dared use "full employment, job vacancies and pay rises" as Project Fear. Well apart from Stuart Rose, but he was telling the truth not engaging in Fear.
    It turned out to be right in almost all respects, except one. I was one of those who expected an immediate hit to business after the referendum, because of the collapse of confidence. That didn't happen (except as regards the exchange rate), and I'm happy to admit I was wrong on that. In retrospect, the long period between the referendum and the end of last year, which is when Brexit actually happened for practical purposes, meant that the effect was much slower that I'd thought it would be.

    On the other hand, in many respects it's far, far worse than I was expecting. I never thought relations with our EU ex-friends would get as bad as they now are, or that the government would turn so vehemently anti-business, or that we'd leave such excellent schemes as REACH and CE marking, or not agree an SPS deal with the EU, or that any PM would be so brain-dead as to put a border down the Irish Sea. As a result of those unexpectedly bad decisions, there's a lot more pain to come - much of it hasn't kicked in yet.
    And yet, there are signs pointing the opposite way, too. It is disingenuous to pretend Everything is Apocalyptic

    ‘London banks embark on record hiring spree as City tilts toward post-Brexit --> buff.ly/2Yp2W11’

    https://twitter.com/cityam/status/1446486175582199835?s=21
    The City is proving quite resilient, but I don't think the article you linked to is much to celebrate Brexit-wise:

    Devoting more resources to preventing money laundering and fraud was the primary factor driving up risk and compliance recruitment, Morgan McKinley said.

    “Busy areas in compliance and risk include: compliance advisory, financial crime / AML, surveillance and monitoring and credit risk,” Ben Harris and Leo Bellometti at Morgan McKinley, said.

    “This has been caused by the easing of government lockdown measures, and in turn with banks initially having made cuts to their staff, they now need people to join their teams again.”


    Lawyers are doing well, of course, with all massive new burden of legal and regulatory disruption. Still, I'm not sure that was quite what the Red Wall thought they were voting for.


  • And yet in an act of blatant spite/stupidity, the EU put a hard border down the island of Ireland.....

    Two words that demonstrate what a bunch of c**** you would have still ruling us: Covid vaccines.

    Which was never implemented, and which in policy terms lasted all of, I don't know, a few hours.

    I mean, really - is that the best you can come up with?
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,535

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    It's progress of a sort. At least the ludicrous outright denial that there were going to be any downsides at all is melting away, into a grudging admittance that Brexit is a disaster, albeit it is claimed a temporary disaster, for sectors such as haulage, agriculture, and especially fishing. It now turns out that that was part of the plan all along, just a part that they omitted to tell us (and especially the haulage industry, farmers and fishermen) about, and indeed which they sneered at as 'Project Fear'.

    Still, prodigal son and all that.
    "Project Fear" lest you forget was an immediate recession and half a million unemployed.

    Nobody would have dared use "full employment, job vacancies and pay rises" as Project Fear. Well apart from Stuart Rose, but he was telling the truth not engaging in Fear.
    It turned out to be right in almost all respects, except one. I was one of those who expected an immediate hit to business after the referendum, because of the collapse of confidence. That didn't happen (except as regards the exchange rate), and I'm happy to admit I was wrong on that. In retrospect, the long period between the referendum and the end of last year, which is when Brexit actually happened for practical purposes, meant that the effect was much slower that I'd thought it would be.

    On the other hand, in many respects it's far, far worse than I was expecting. I never thought relations with our EU ex-friends would get as bad as they now are, or that the government would turn so vehemently anti-business, or that we'd leave such excellent schemes as REACH and CE marking, or not agree an SPS deal with the EU, or that any PM would be so brain-dead as to put a border down the Irish Sea. As a result of those unexpectedly bad decisions, there's a lot more pain to come - much of it hasn't kicked in yet.
    And yet in an act of blatant spite/stupidity, the EU put a hard border down the island of Ireland.....

    Two words that demonstrate what a bunch of c**** you would have still ruling us: Covid vaccines.
    a) The EU did not 'rule us' and b) the EU countries we normally compare outselves to are ahead of us on vaccines, and (possibly as a consequence) seeing fewer covid cases.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    edited October 2021
    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,473
    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    It's progress of a sort. At least the ludicrous outright denial that there were going to be any downsides at all is melting away, into a grudging admittance that Brexit is a disaster, albeit it is claimed a temporary disaster, for sectors such as haulage, agriculture, and especially fishing. It now turns out that that was part of the plan all along, just a part that they omitted to tell us (and especially the haulage industry, farmers and fishermen) about, and indeed which they sneered at as 'Project Fear'.

    Still, prodigal son and all that.
    "Project Fear" lest you forget was an immediate recession and half a million unemployed.

    Nobody would have dared use "full employment, job vacancies and pay rises" as Project Fear. Well apart from Stuart Rose, but he was telling the truth not engaging in Fear.
    It turned out to be right in almost all respects, except one. I was one of those who expected an immediate hit to business after the referendum, because of the collapse of confidence. That didn't happen (except as regards the exchange rate), and I'm happy to admit I was wrong on that. In retrospect, the long period between the referendum and the end of last year, which is when Brexit actually happened for practical purposes, meant that the effect was much slower that I'd thought it would be.

    On the other hand, in many respects it's far, far worse than I was expecting. I never thought relations with our EU ex-friends would get as bad as they now are, or that the government would turn so vehemently anti-business, or that we'd leave such excellent schemes as REACH and CE marking, or not agree an SPS deal with the EU, or that any PM would be so brain-dead as to put a border down the Irish Sea. As a result of those unexpectedly bad decisions, there's a lot more pain to come - much of it hasn't kicked in yet.
    And yet, there are signs pointing the opposite way, too. It is disingenuous to pretend Everything is Apocalyptic

    ‘London banks embark on record hiring spree as City tilts toward post-Brexit --> buff.ly/2Yp2W11’

    https://twitter.com/cityam/status/1446486175582199835?s=21
    How do you think it will be at next election if financial services are thriving in London, while upland farmers in the North and Wales go broke?

    I think that we will see a big upswing in internal migration from Red Wall Leaverstan to cosmopolitan, thriving Remainia. Going to University will be that pathway.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,535

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    It's progress of a sort. At least the ludicrous outright denial that there were going to be any downsides at all is melting away, into a grudging admittance that Brexit is a disaster, albeit it is claimed a temporary disaster, for sectors such as haulage, agriculture, and especially fishing. It now turns out that that was part of the plan all along, just a part that they omitted to tell us (and especially the haulage industry, farmers and fishermen) about, and indeed which they sneered at as 'Project Fear'.

    Still, prodigal son and all that.
    That fine nobleman, late of this manor, SeanT, did warn us of the impending pains of Brexit, in his baby article in the Spectator


    ‘Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.’

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-brexit-is-just-like-having-a-baby
    But don't worry, 10 years later we'll largely be over the worst!
    We're already 4 years later, and still with Brexit incomplete (no incoming customs controls etc.)
    We Brexited on January 1, 2020, as Remoaners constantly pointed out in the years prior - ‘it hasn’t happened yet, just you wait’
    It's cetainly happing now, sadly.
    What's certainly happening?

    A crash? Mass unemployment?

    No, Britain is booming. We have mass vacancies, wages going up . . . when will the horrors ever end?

    As I said before, calling this a crisis is like SeanT complaining he has too many nubile young women interested in him.
    ...which sounds like a terrible situation (for the women) to me.

    Anyway good debating with you - I'm turning in for the night.
  • kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    glw said:

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    No I'm saying there will be some upheaval for about ten to twenty years, I never said disaster.

    But you know what: there is always upheaval anyway. Covid brought upheaval. The GFC brought upheaval. The dotcom bubble brought upheaval. Online shopping brought upheaval.

    Brexit is just one more thing on a very, very long list of reasons that there will be disruption. But such disruption is a good thing. That's what Brown failed to understand - it is boom and bust that leads to improved development and living standards. He managed to abolish boom but not bust, its time to reverse that mistake.
    I would be astonished if come the end of the 21st century, assuming there is still a human race, that Brexit would be in the top 10 of significant things to happen to the UK. If we can't cope with leaving an overgrown trade organisation we are doomed because far bigger problems await us.
    I'll bet you £1,000 that it is.
    Interesting bet!

    Brexit is bloody big but it’s not monumental. Covid is monumental, so Brexit is already number 2 in the ‘list of significant things to happen to Britain this century’

    If Scotland had voted yes that would also have been bigger than Brexit

    We’ve got 79 years to go until 2100. If the 21st century is as eventful as the 20th then Brexit will definitely be relegated much further down the list. Let’s hope the 21st century isn’t that ‘interesting’ but the omens so far are that it will be, and might very possibly be much MORE turbulent, from global war with China to proper AI to aliens saying Hi to robots taking over to climate apocalypse to migration wars and on and on

    My guess: Brexit will probably scrape in to the top 10, but right at the bottom. Many bigger things will hit us


    Interesting thought - what are the the biggest stories/events/transformations of the 21st century so far and how would you order them?

    I would say:
    1: Covid
    2: 9/11 and war on terror
    3: The rise of online shopping/death of the high street
    4: Brexit
    5: Financial crisis

    4 & 5 might ultimately swap positions.

    #3 is probably long term the biggest thing of the last 21 years, but generally gets overlooked.
    Pah! Never mind the 21st century, what, in order of impact, are the biggest events/tranformations that affected Britain during the 2nd millennium?

    Off the top of my head, I'm thinking:

    1. The Norman Conquest (yep, even after nearly a 1000 years)
    2. The Industrial Revolution
    3. The two World Wars (got to treat them as one)
    4. The English Civil War
    5. The Reformation

    What - no room for the Empire? Printing? the Enlightenment? Who knows?
    The 'English Civil War'? I hope you are referring only to the English bits and not using that as a catchall term for the War of the Three Kingdoms/British Civil War - lots of killing to spread around the isles there.
    "Commonwealth Civil War"?
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    edited October 2021
    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
  • Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    Nah, the right thing to do is to acknowledge that France are our neighbours not our friends, stop sending them money, and come up with a solution that we can implement on our own that doesn't rely upon their co-operation.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905
    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
  • Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    Nah, the right thing to do is to acknowledge that France are our neighbours not our friends, stop sending them money, and come up with a solution that we can implement on our own that doesn't rely upon their co-operation.
    Excellent idea. When you've worked up the detail, I'm sure Ms Patel would be delighted to hear from you.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,127
    F*cking awful decision.


    Exclusive: Boris Johnson backs away from weakening assisted suicide laws
    Prime Minister decides not to support plans that would allow terminally ill adults the option to die at a time and place of their choosing

    (Telegraph)
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924
    edited October 2021
    Anyways. I can see we are moving on Brexit. Not necessarily forward, but moving.
    The arguments have shifted. The bitterness is a little more intermittent.
    We have leapt out of the plane.
    Some find freefall exhilarating.
    Others are shitting themselves about the reliability of the parachute.
    Some didn't want a sky diving lesson at all.
    I'd have been happy watching Strictly.
  • Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    Nah, the right thing to do is to acknowledge that France are our neighbours not our friends, stop sending them money, and come up with a solution that we can implement on our own that doesn't rely upon their co-operation.
    Excellent idea. When you've worked up the detail, I'm sure Ms Patel would be delighted to hear from you.
    Agree a deal with a third party nation [maybe Rwanda] that has the rule of law that any and all refugees that come to the UK from France will be sent there. Give that nation a big cheque. Pass a law in Parliament saying that this happens and that the Courts can not interfere.

    Then process asylum claims lawfully bringing people over safely and humanely from where they're actually desperate and not from France.
  • Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    It's progress of a sort. At least the ludicrous outright denial that there were going to be any downsides at all is melting away, into a grudging admittance that Brexit is a disaster, albeit it is claimed a temporary disaster, for sectors such as haulage, agriculture, and especially fishing. It now turns out that that was part of the plan all along, just a part that they omitted to tell us (and especially the haulage industry, farmers and fishermen) about, and indeed which they sneered at as 'Project Fear'.

    Still, prodigal son and all that.
    "Project Fear" lest you forget was an immediate recession and half a million unemployed.

    Nobody would have dared use "full employment, job vacancies and pay rises" as Project Fear. Well apart from Stuart Rose, but he was telling the truth not engaging in Fear.
    It turned out to be right in almost all respects, except one. I was one of those who expected an immediate hit to business after the referendum, because of the collapse of confidence. That didn't happen (except as regards the exchange rate), and I'm happy to admit I was wrong on that. In retrospect, the long period between the referendum and the end of last year, which is when Brexit actually happened for practical purposes, meant that the effect was much slower that I'd thought it would be.

    On the other hand, in many respects it's far, far worse than I was expecting. I never thought relations with our EU ex-friends would get as bad as they now are, or that the government would turn so vehemently anti-business, or that we'd leave such excellent schemes as REACH and CE marking, or not agree an SPS deal with the EU, or that any PM would be so brain-dead as to put a border down the Irish Sea. As a result of those unexpectedly bad decisions, there's a lot more pain to come - much of it hasn't kicked in yet.
    And yet, there are signs pointing the opposite way, too. It is disingenuous to pretend Everything is Apocalyptic

    ‘London banks embark on record hiring spree as City tilts toward post-Brexit --> buff.ly/2Yp2W11’

    https://twitter.com/cityam/status/1446486175582199835?s=21
    How do you think it will be at next election if financial services are thriving in London, while upland farmers in the North and Wales go broke?

    I think that we will see a big upswing in internal migration from Red Wall Leaverstan to cosmopolitan, thriving Remainia. Going to University will be that pathway.
    You seem to have a bizarre agricultural fixation tonight.

    As a proportion of the population the number of upland farmers in northern England is microscopic.

    And given that all the talk since covid has been of a migration away from cities (backed up with the massive housebuilding in 'Red Wall' areas) to towns and rural areas why do you think the reverse is going to happen ?

    Or are you thinking or merely desperately hoping ?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,127
    Johnson effectively condemning more people to die in utter agony and total and abject pain and misery, against their wishes. People will continue to try to get to switzerland.


    I am f*cking :angry::rage: tonight

  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    We haven’t spent the last five years insulting them. Our tabloids can be a bit punchy but that’s just our boisterous media.

    Up until AUKUS, the only really hostile acts have come from the EU, and especially France. The overnight hard border across Ireland. The theft of our vaccines. The smearing of Astra Zeneca. The attempts to damage the City, the threats to cut power to Jersey, the disgraceful behaviour with channel migrants (happening for years now). Barnier’s promise to make Brexit ‘so painful the British will regret they ever did it’

    The fact you can’t see any of this just shows how pathetically myopic you’ve become. You’re turning into AC Grayling

    So relations with France are in the freezer for a decade. Fuck em. We can cope
  • isam said:

    Nice to have a PB consensus on Brexit - Everyone’s predictions were entirely correct, some peoples were even more correct than they thought they would be, and no ones giving an inch!

    😂😂😂

    If the Project Fear claim of a recession and mass unemployment correctly predicted full unemployment and mass vacancies, then I think we can safely say that all predictions for the rest of time have come true.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    Nah, the right thing to do is to acknowledge that France are our neighbours not our friends, stop sending them money, and come up with a solution that we can implement on our own that doesn't rely upon their co-operation.
    Excellent idea. When you've worked up the detail, I'm sure Ms Patel would be delighted to hear from you.
    Agree a deal with a third party nation [maybe Rwanda] that has the rule of law that any and all refugees that come to the UK from France will be sent there. Give that nation a big cheque. Pass a law in Parliament saying that this happens and that the Courts can not interfere.

    Then process asylum claims lawfully bringing people over safely and humanely from where they're actually desperate and not from France.
    Not every problem is solved by money.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,127
    edited October 2021
    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    It's progress of a sort. At least the ludicrous outright denial that there were going to be any downsides at all is melting away, into a grudging admittance that Brexit is a disaster, albeit it is claimed a temporary disaster, for sectors such as haulage, agriculture, and especially fishing. It now turns out that that was part of the plan all along, just a part that they omitted to tell us (and especially the haulage industry, farmers and fishermen) about, and indeed which they sneered at as 'Project Fear'.

    Still, prodigal son and all that.
    "Project Fear" lest you forget was an immediate recession and half a million unemployed.

    Nobody would have dared use "full employment, job vacancies and pay rises" as Project Fear. Well apart from Stuart Rose, but he was telling the truth not engaging in Fear.
    It turned out to be right in almost all respects, except one. I was one of those who expected an immediate hit to business after the referendum, because of the collapse of confidence. That didn't happen (except as regards the exchange rate), and I'm happy to admit I was wrong on that. In retrospect, the long period between the referendum and the end of last year, which is when Brexit actually happened for practical purposes, meant that the effect was much slower that I'd thought it would be.

    On the other hand, in many respects it's far, far worse than I was expecting. I never thought relations with our EU ex-friends would get as bad as they now are, or that the government would turn so vehemently anti-business, or that we'd leave such excellent schemes as REACH and CE marking, or not agree an SPS deal with the EU, or that any PM would be so brain-dead as to put a border down the Irish Sea. As a result of those unexpectedly bad decisions, there's a lot more pain to come - much of it hasn't kicked in yet.
    While we must accept some of the blame for the poor UK-EU relations, I think it's a bit... generous... to the EU to blame only us.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,127
    I was really hoping Baroness Meacher's bill would get somewhere.

    I can feel a thread header coming on...
  • dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    Nah, the right thing to do is to acknowledge that France are our neighbours not our friends, stop sending them money, and come up with a solution that we can implement on our own that doesn't rely upon their co-operation.
    Excellent idea. When you've worked up the detail, I'm sure Ms Patel would be delighted to hear from you.
    Agree a deal with a third party nation [maybe Rwanda] that has the rule of law that any and all refugees that come to the UK from France will be sent there. Give that nation a big cheque. Pass a law in Parliament saying that this happens and that the Courts can not interfere.

    Then process asylum claims lawfully bringing people over safely and humanely from where they're actually desperate and not from France.
    Not every problem is solved by money.
    Indeed. But this one is.

    There are some poor countries that already find taking refugees from other nations [and the UN] to be an excellent source of revenue. They literally get paid to take the refugees off the hands of other nations and since they're judged as a safe destination by the UN the refugee gets somewhere safe to be, the country that needs cash gets cash and the country with cash gets to spend it.

    Everybody wins - except those who want to come here not for reasons of refuge, in which case they're exploiting our generosity that could and should be offering safe harbour to those who genuinely need our help and refuge.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    We haven’t spent the last five years insulting them. Our tabloids can be a bit punchy but that’s just our boisterous media.

    Up until AUKUS, the only really hostile acts have come from the EU, and especially France. The overnight hard border across Ireland. The theft of our vaccines. The smearing of Astra Zeneca. The attempts to damage the City, the threats to cut power to Jersey, the disgraceful behaviour with channel migrants (happening for years now). Barnier’s promise to make Brexit ‘so painful the British will regret they ever did it’

    The fact you can’t see any of this just shows how pathetically myopic you’ve become. You’re turning into AC Grayling

    So relations with France are in the freezer for a decade. Fuck em. We can cope
    We have a boisterous media.
    They are hostile.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,473

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    It's progress of a sort. At least the ludicrous outright denial that there were going to be any downsides at all is melting away, into a grudging admittance that Brexit is a disaster, albeit it is claimed a temporary disaster, for sectors such as haulage, agriculture, and especially fishing. It now turns out that that was part of the plan all along, just a part that they omitted to tell us (and especially the haulage industry, farmers and fishermen) about, and indeed which they sneered at as 'Project Fear'.

    Still, prodigal son and all that.
    "Project Fear" lest you forget was an immediate recession and half a million unemployed.

    Nobody would have dared use "full employment, job vacancies and pay rises" as Project Fear. Well apart from Stuart Rose, but he was telling the truth not engaging in Fear.
    It turned out to be right in almost all respects, except one. I was one of those who expected an immediate hit to business after the referendum, because of the collapse of confidence. That didn't happen (except as regards the exchange rate), and I'm happy to admit I was wrong on that. In retrospect, the long period between the referendum and the end of last year, which is when Brexit actually happened for practical purposes, meant that the effect was much slower that I'd thought it would be.

    On the other hand, in many respects it's far, far worse than I was expecting. I never thought relations with our EU ex-friends would get as bad as they now are, or that the government would turn so vehemently anti-business, or that we'd leave such excellent schemes as REACH and CE marking, or not agree an SPS deal with the EU, or that any PM would be so brain-dead as to put a border down the Irish Sea. As a result of those unexpectedly bad decisions, there's a lot more pain to come - much of it hasn't kicked in yet.
    And yet, there are signs pointing the opposite way, too. It is disingenuous to pretend Everything is Apocalyptic

    ‘London banks embark on record hiring spree as City tilts toward post-Brexit --> buff.ly/2Yp2W11’

    https://twitter.com/cityam/status/1446486175582199835?s=21
    How do you think it will be at next election if financial services are thriving in London, while upland farmers in the North and Wales go broke?

    I think that we will see a big upswing in internal migration from Red Wall Leaverstan to cosmopolitan, thriving Remainia. Going to University will be that pathway.
    You seem to have a bizarre agricultural fixation tonight.

    As a proportion of the population the number of upland farmers in northern England is microscopic.

    And given that all the talk since covid has been of a migration away from cities (backed up with the massive housebuilding in 'Red Wall' areas) to towns and rural areas why do you think the reverse is going to happen ?

    Or are you thinking or merely desperately hoping ?
    Upland farmers are like fishermen, having a cultural and political significance beyond their numbers.

    The problem in red wall areas is an ageing demographic, often trapped by being property owners, while their youngsters go off to cosmopolitan urban Remania. Sure, we may well see incoming second homers arriving in the West Country, where they work from home part of the week, but they will be city folk culturally.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,875
    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924

    I we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choice to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    We did the libertarian thing earlier. Most PB lefties are more libertarian than PB libertarians it transpires.
    And they are a country light year more than the PM. Whatever bollocks his apologists claim.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905
    PB Remainers:

    You can't claim that shortages of everything except labour are due to Brexit.

    PB Leavers:

    You can't claim that the shortages of labour are due to Brexit, but the shortages of everything else are global.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905
    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    rcs1000 said:

    PB Remainers:

    You can't claim that shortages of everything except labour are due to Brexit.

    PB Leavers:

    You can't claim that the shortages of labour are due to Brexit, but the shortages of everything else are global.

    The shortages of EVERYTHING are due to Covid. There. Sorted
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Or due to being stuck in France.
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,140

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905
    edited October 2021
    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    PB Remainers:

    You can't claim that shortages of everything except labour are due to Brexit.

    PB Leavers:

    You can't claim that the shortages of labour are due to Brexit, but the shortages of everything else are global.

    The shortages of EVERYTHING are due to Covid. There. Sorted
    Or, more specifically, they are the result of demand rebounding sharply everywhere as Covid retreats.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924
    rcs1000 said:

    PB Remainers:

    You can't claim that shortages of everything except labour are due to Brexit.

    PB Leavers:

    You can't claim that the shortages of labour are due to Brexit, but the shortages of everything else are global.

    I think you will find they can.
    I didn't think you were new here. Bit confused now.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
    lol. I am capable of humanitarian sentiment, and yes I would be ashamed of Britain and the British police if they acted with such cynical disregard for human life. This is what makes us morally superior to the hateful Frogs and this is why we must start carpet bombing their coastal towns tonight
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,473
    rcs1000 said:

    PB Remainers:

    You can't claim that shortages of everything except labour are due to Brexit.

    PB Leavers:

    You can't claim that the shortages of labour are due to Brexit, but the shortages of everything else are global.

    Sure the world wide mismatch of goods, labour and places is not due to Brexit, but Brexit has reduced our resilience and ability to cope with those shocks.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,127

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    THEY DON'T.

    Poll after poll shows the voting public want assisted dying for the bad cases e.g. motor neuro disease.

    It is the politicians who back away every five years when a private members bill comes along.

    I have no idea what they are scare of. It can't be the religious right in this country.

  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924
    edited October 2021

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    Not true. They love freedom. They just don’t want it for others.
    Assisted dying forces them to consider it may be them. So they hate it because it absolutely has to be for others.
    The alternative thought doesn’t bear thinking about.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905
    edited October 2021
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    We haven’t spent the last five years insulting them. Our tabloids can be a bit punchy but that’s just our boisterous media.

    Up until AUKUS, the only really hostile acts have come from the EU, and especially France. The overnight hard border across Ireland. The theft of our vaccines. The smearing of Astra Zeneca. The attempts to damage the City, the threats to cut power to Jersey, the disgraceful behaviour with channel migrants (happening for years now). Barnier’s promise to make Brexit ‘so painful the British will regret they ever did it’

    The fact you can’t see any of this just shows how pathetically myopic you’ve become. You’re turning into AC Grayling

    So relations with France are in the freezer for a decade. Fuck em. We can cope
    The EU never smeared the AstraZeneca vaccine. Indeed, the European Medicines Agency has repeatedly said it is both safe and efficacious.

    The people who have more reprehensibly smeared AZ are:

    - Handelsblatt
    and
    - Macron

    There may be more, but they are the primary culprits.

    Edit to add: about three months ago I downloaded the big EU database of vaccine supplies and usage by product and by country, and was very surprised to discover that (outside France), there had been better take-up of AZ percentage-wise than Pfizer. I was going to write a header about it. Then I got distracted by doing something completely different.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,127
    dixiedean said:

    I we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choice to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    We did the libertarian thing earlier. Most PB lefties are more libertarian than PB libertarians it transpires.
    And they are a country light year more than the PM. Whatever bollocks his apologists claim.
    He's certainly bollocks.

    I feel this issue.

    It is the final straw for me and Johnson. F*cking useless windbag is only the half of it. Mr Piss and Wind yelling freedom whilst he locks down the country and blocks legislation that frees people from the State.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905
    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    He was doxxed, IIRC.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    PB Remainers:

    You can't claim that shortages of everything except labour are due to Brexit.

    PB Leavers:

    You can't claim that the shortages of labour are due to Brexit, but the shortages of everything else are global.

    The shortages of EVERYTHING are due to Covid. There. Sorted
    Or, more specifically, they are the result of demand rebounding sharply everywhere as Covid retreats.
    Which is Covid

    Also it’s not just the rebound. Eg Covid means that millions of workers have quit their industries, or are physically displaced from their work. = shortages

    It should not come as a surprise. The Black Death led to severe shortages - of food, as it rotted in the fields I harvested, and of labourers, as so many peasants were dead. Indeed wages famously shot up after that plague

    That was 670 years ago. We’ve had plenty of warning of what pandemics will do
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905
    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    PB Remainers:

    You can't claim that shortages of everything except labour are due to Brexit.

    PB Leavers:

    You can't claim that the shortages of labour are due to Brexit, but the shortages of everything else are global.

    The shortages of EVERYTHING are due to Covid. There. Sorted
    Or, more specifically, they are the result of demand rebounding sharply everywhere as Covid retreats.
    Which is Covid

    Also it’s not just the rebound. Eg Covid means that millions of workers have quit their industries, or are physically displaced from their work. = shortages

    It should not come as a surprise. The Black Death led to severe shortages - of food, as it rotted in the fields I harvested, and of labourers, as so many peasants were dead. Indeed wages famously shot up after that plague

    That was 670 years ago. We’ve had plenty of warning of what pandemics will do
    Sure, I was just being a bit more specific.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    We haven’t spent the last five years insulting them. Our tabloids can be a bit punchy but that’s just our boisterous media.

    Up until AUKUS, the only really hostile acts have come from the EU, and especially France. The overnight hard border across Ireland. The theft of our vaccines. The smearing of Astra Zeneca. The attempts to damage the City, the threats to cut power to Jersey, the disgraceful behaviour with channel migrants (happening for years now). Barnier’s promise to make Brexit ‘so painful the British will regret they ever did it’

    The fact you can’t see any of this just shows how pathetically myopic you’ve become. You’re turning into AC Grayling

    So relations with France are in the freezer for a decade. Fuck em. We can cope
    The EU never smeared the AstraZeneca vaccine. Indeed, the European Medicines Agency has repeatedly said it is both safe and efficacious.

    The people who have more reprehensibly smeared AZ are:

    - Handelsblatt
    and
    - Macron

    There may be more, but they are the primary culprits.
    That’s why I said ‘the EU and especially France’ in my comment
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,127
    dixiedean said:

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    Not true. They love freedom. They just don’t want it for others.
    Assisted dying forces them to consider it may be them. So they hate it because it absolutely has to be for others.
    The alternative thought doesn’t bear thinking about.
    But the public support assisted dying.

    Even the bloody BMA is now not prepared to argue against it.

    Johnson is completely out of touch with how ordinary people think.

    They know in their guts it could be them or their nana.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,875
    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,140
    dixiedean said:

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    Not true. They love freedom. They just don’t want it for others.
    I don't think that's true. For example the British government was very popular when it was literally banning people from leaving their houses except for daily state-sanctioned walk. The voters definitely want the government to boss around other people and particularly foreigners, but they also like being told what to do.
  • Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    So in short we now, finally, have our PB Brexiters agreeing that those who said Brexit would be a disaster were right. But that it will only be for twenty years.

    And some of those saying this should have a better understanding of discounting and NPV than they are putting on display.

    It's progress of a sort. At least the ludicrous outright denial that there were going to be any downsides at all is melting away, into a grudging admittance that Brexit is a disaster, albeit it is claimed a temporary disaster, for sectors such as haulage, agriculture, and especially fishing. It now turns out that that was part of the plan all along, just a part that they omitted to tell us (and especially the haulage industry, farmers and fishermen) about, and indeed which they sneered at as 'Project Fear'.

    Still, prodigal son and all that.
    "Project Fear" lest you forget was an immediate recession and half a million unemployed.

    Nobody would have dared use "full employment, job vacancies and pay rises" as Project Fear. Well apart from Stuart Rose, but he was telling the truth not engaging in Fear.
    It turned out to be right in almost all respects, except one. I was one of those who expected an immediate hit to business after the referendum, because of the collapse of confidence. That didn't happen (except as regards the exchange rate), and I'm happy to admit I was wrong on that. In retrospect, the long period between the referendum and the end of last year, which is when Brexit actually happened for practical purposes, meant that the effect was much slower that I'd thought it would be.

    On the other hand, in many respects it's far, far worse than I was expecting. I never thought relations with our EU ex-friends would get as bad as they now are, or that the government would turn so vehemently anti-business, or that we'd leave such excellent schemes as REACH and CE marking, or not agree an SPS deal with the EU, or that any PM would be so brain-dead as to put a border down the Irish Sea. As a result of those unexpectedly bad decisions, there's a lot more pain to come - much of it hasn't kicked in yet.
    And yet, there are signs pointing the opposite way, too. It is disingenuous to pretend Everything is Apocalyptic

    ‘London banks embark on record hiring spree as City tilts toward post-Brexit --> buff.ly/2Yp2W11’

    https://twitter.com/cityam/status/1446486175582199835?s=21
    How do you think it will be at next election if financial services are thriving in London, while upland farmers in the North and Wales go broke?

    I think that we will see a big upswing in internal migration from Red Wall Leaverstan to cosmopolitan, thriving Remainia. Going to University will be that pathway.
    You seem to have a bizarre agricultural fixation tonight.

    As a proportion of the population the number of upland farmers in northern England is microscopic.

    And given that all the talk since covid has been of a migration away from cities (backed up with the massive housebuilding in 'Red Wall' areas) to towns and rural areas why do you think the reverse is going to happen ?

    Or are you thinking or merely desperately hoping ?
    Upland farmers are like fishermen, having a cultural and political significance beyond their numbers.

    The problem in red wall areas is an ageing demographic, often trapped by being property owners, while their youngsters go off to cosmopolitan urban Remania. Sure, we may well see incoming second homers arriving in the West Country, where they work from home part of the week, but they will be city folk culturally.
    You need to get out of your bunker before you ask where Steiner is.

    Why do you think there is so much house building in northern England ?

    Its not for city based second homers its for people buying their only home.

    Babbling about second homes in the West Country might be everyday talk for rich doctors but there is nothing everyday about it for the other 99%.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    We haven’t spent the last five years insulting them. Our tabloids can be a bit punchy but that’s just our boisterous media.

    Up until AUKUS, the only really hostile acts have come from the EU, and especially France. The overnight hard border across Ireland. The theft of our vaccines. The smearing of Astra Zeneca. The attempts to damage the City, the threats to cut power to Jersey, the disgraceful behaviour with channel migrants (happening for years now). Barnier’s promise to make Brexit ‘so painful the British will regret they ever did it’

    The fact you can’t see any of this just shows how pathetically myopic you’ve become. You’re turning into AC Grayling

    So relations with France are in the freezer for a decade. Fuck em. We can cope
    The EU never smeared the AstraZeneca vaccine. Indeed, the European Medicines Agency has repeatedly said it is both safe and efficacious.

    The people who have more reprehensibly smeared AZ are:

    - Handelsblatt
    and
    - Macron

    There may be more, but they are the primary culprits.
    See prominent members of the governing parties in Australia. Some of them now ex, but tolerated by a craven PM in the fear of a Murdoch onslaught.
    Can't have your best pro-coal anti-climate action warriors slandered.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,127
    Remember the law that Johnson wants to block is only for people with SIX MONTHs or less to live.

    It is not about killing healthy granny to get the house.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    I was just a lurker at the time, but wasn’t the actual final straw Plato (RIP) doxxing his address in Liverpool?

  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673

    dixiedean said:

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    Not true. They love freedom. They just don’t want it for others.
    I don't think that's true. For example the British government was very popular when it was literally banning people from leaving their houses except for daily state-sanctioned walk. The voters definitely want the government to boss around other people and particularly foreigners, but they also like being told what to do.
    No, they value freedom and they value life even more.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,875
    Leon said:

    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    I was just a lurker at the time, but wasn’t the actual final straw Plato (RIP) doxxing his address in Liverpool?

    Haha I bet he loved that! How he hated her
  • rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    We haven’t spent the last five years insulting them. Our tabloids can be a bit punchy but that’s just our boisterous media.

    Up until AUKUS, the only really hostile acts have come from the EU, and especially France. The overnight hard border across Ireland. The theft of our vaccines. The smearing of Astra Zeneca. The attempts to damage the City, the threats to cut power to Jersey, the disgraceful behaviour with channel migrants (happening for years now). Barnier’s promise to make Brexit ‘so painful the British will regret they ever did it’

    The fact you can’t see any of this just shows how pathetically myopic you’ve become. You’re turning into AC Grayling

    So relations with France are in the freezer for a decade. Fuck em. We can cope
    The EU never smeared the AstraZeneca vaccine. Indeed, the European Medicines Agency has repeatedly said it is both safe and efficacious.

    The people who have more reprehensibly smeared AZ are:

    - Handelsblatt
    and
    - Macron

    There may be more, but they are the primary culprits.

    Edit to add: about three months ago I downloaded the big EU database of vaccine supplies and usage by product and by country, and was very surprised to discover that (outside France), there had been better take-up of AZ percentage-wise than Pfizer. I was going to write a header about it. Then I got distracted by doing something completely different.
    Actually that is not exactly true. Both Merkel and, more importantly, Ursula von der Leyen claimed the UK had rushed the approval of the AZ vaccine and that it was untested. This was a clear attempt to undermine it in the eyes of Europeans. Now you might claim that Merkel was 'only' the Chancellor of Germany but UvdL was and is President of the European Commission.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673
    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    Is his wife someone we would have heard of?
  • Remember the law that Johnson wants to block is only for people with SIX MONTHs or less to live.

    It is not about killing healthy granny to get the house.

    If it was, there'd probably be more support for that amongst a certain type of people ... 😒
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    Wow. I missed all that. tim was a grumpy old bugger, but I did like when he went off on tangents about wine or song.
  • isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    SeanT was my kind of scum: fearless and inventive.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,312

    dixiedean said:

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    Not true. They love freedom. They just don’t want it for others.
    I don't think that's true. For example the British government was very popular when it was literally banning people from leaving their houses except for daily state-sanctioned walk. The voters definitely want the government to boss around other people and particularly foreigners, but they also like being told what to do.
    It's a bit like many ex-Army people say, perhaps - in the Army (below General rank) you are told precisely what to do, and if you do it you "succeed" and are praised. Civilian life is messier, and real life in the middle of a pandemic is horribly messy. A government telling you to take precisely 30 minutes' walk per day and in return the country will get through the crisis seems refreshingly straightforward.

    Conversely, Johnson's poll ratings have slumped when he's indulged his tendency to vacillate and procrastinate - people don't in general then say "Oh good, I can do what I like", they ask for a lead. If the sense of crisis goes away then people will be keener on "freedom".
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673
    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
    lol. I am capable of humanitarian sentiment, and yes I would be ashamed of Britain and the British police if they acted with such cynical disregard for human life. This is what makes us morally superior to the hateful Frogs and this is why we must start carpet bombing their coastal towns tonight
    We should take all the illegal migrants in the UK and start dumping them at random French locations around the world: French Guaiana, Reunion, Guadeloupe.
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,140

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    THEY DON'T.

    Poll after poll shows the voting public want assisted dying for the bad cases e.g. motor neuro disease.

    It is the politicians who back away every five years when a private members bill comes along.

    I have no idea what they are scare of. It can't be the religious right in this country.

    If you allow it you get actual cases, involving a friend or relative who didn't have veto accusing the state of sanctioning murder, and these will be hyped and mispresented in the press.
  • Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    Why did you suddenly expect it to work now when it never worked even long before the Brexit vote. You are deluded.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,875
    Leon said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    I was just a lurker at the time, but wasn’t the actual final straw Plato (RIP) doxxing his address in Liverpool?

    Haha I bet he loved that! How he hated her
    Sad about Plato, however. Quite a tough life, and cruelly shortened

    Yes, very sad
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    We haven’t spent the last five years insulting them. Our tabloids can be a bit punchy but that’s just our boisterous media.

    Up until AUKUS, the only really hostile acts have come from the EU, and especially France. The overnight hard border across Ireland. The theft of our vaccines. The smearing of Astra Zeneca. The attempts to damage the City, the threats to cut power to Jersey, the disgraceful behaviour with channel migrants (happening for years now). Barnier’s promise to make Brexit ‘so painful the British will regret they ever did it’

    The fact you can’t see any of this just shows how pathetically myopic you’ve become. You’re turning into AC Grayling

    So relations with France are in the freezer for a decade. Fuck em. We can cope
    The EU never smeared the AstraZeneca vaccine. Indeed, the European Medicines Agency has repeatedly said it is both safe and efficacious.

    The people who have more reprehensibly smeared AZ are:

    - Handelsblatt
    and
    - Macron

    There may be more, but they are the primary culprits.

    Edit to add: about three months ago I downloaded the big EU database of vaccine supplies and usage by product and by country, and was very surprised to discover that (outside France), there had been better take-up of AZ percentage-wise than Pfizer. I was going to write a header about it. Then I got distracted by doing something completely different.
    Actually that is not exactly true. Both Merkel and, more importantly, Ursula von der Leyen claimed the UK had rushed the approval of the AZ vaccine and that it was untested. This was a clear attempt to undermine it in the eyes of Europeans. Now you might claim that Merkel was 'only' the Chancellor of Germany but UvdL was and is President of the European Commission.
    Indeed. And I still find it hard to believe they did all this. And I cannot find any reason for it, other than bitterness at Brexit and embarrassment that Britain was - back then - doing better on vaccines. They endangered lives for such pettiness?

    You can maybe expect such idiocy from a petulant man-child like Macron, or a mediocrity like UVDL. But Merkel? The sober scientist?! The great stateswoman?
  • isamisam Posts: 40,875
    Aslan said:

    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    Is his wife someone we would have heard of?
    She was a successful children’s doctor I think, but not famous
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924

    dixiedean said:

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    Not true. They love freedom. They just don’t want it for others.
    Assisted dying forces them to consider it may be them. So they hate it because it absolutely has to be for others.
    The alternative thought doesn’t bear thinking about.
    But the public support assisted dying.

    Even the bloody BMA is now not prepared to argue against it.

    Johnson is completely out of touch with how ordinary people think.

    They know in their guts it could be them or their nana.
    Do they? Theoretically they do.
    That the PM is in hock to some radical religious groups is not always noted.
    Assisted dying, conversion therapy, I hesitate to mention trans. It is of a piece.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    TimT said:

    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    Wow. I missed all that. tim was a grumpy old bugger, but I did like when he went off on tangents about wine or song.
    You can still find him on Twitter. He is often amusingly waspish, as is his wont
  • dixiedean said:

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    Not true. They love freedom. They just don’t want it for others.
    I don't think that's true. For example the British government was very popular when it was literally banning people from leaving their houses except for daily state-sanctioned walk. The voters definitely want the government to boss around other people and particularly foreigners, but they also like being told what to do.
    It's a bit like many ex-Army people say, perhaps - in the Army (below General rank) you are told precisely what to do, and if you do it you "succeed" and are praised. Civilian life is messier, and real life in the middle of a pandemic is horribly messy. A government telling you to take precisely 30 minutes' walk per day and in return the country will get through the crisis seems refreshingly straightforward.

    Conversely, Johnson's poll ratings have slumped when he's indulged his tendency to vacillate and procrastinate - people don't in general then say "Oh good, I can do what I like", they ask for a lead. If the sense of crisis goes away then people will be keener on "freedom".
    The people who demanded precise instructions from the government were also those who continually criticised whatever the instructions were.

    So in conclusion:

    People want instructions so they don't have to think but to be able to do what they want if they choose to (but not have others allowed do what they want) but want someone else to take responsibility and get any blame.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    Leon said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    Wow. I missed all that. tim was a grumpy old bugger, but I did like when he went off on tangents about wine or song.
    You can still find him on Twitter. He is often amusingly waspish, as is his wont
    He had a thing about Osborne. Is his twitter handle Gideon, or such?
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,312

    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    THEY DON'T.

    Poll after poll shows the voting public want assisted dying for the bad cases e.g. motor neuro disease.

    It is the politicians who back away every five years when a private members bill comes along.

    I have no idea what they are scare of. It can't be the religious right in this country.

    I agree with you, but I used not to. This was debated seriously in Parliament when I was there with no whips involved. Originally I worried about people feeling they shouldn't be a burden (prompted or otherwise) in a temporary state of gloom, but I was persuaded after discussion with constituenjts on both sides that with reasonable safeguards it'd be right.

    I don't think MPs are scared of losing votes over it - a majority just genuinely aren't sure what the right thing to do is, and in the absence of a strong Government push either way, the issue doesn't get resolved. As you know, backbench reform is a rarity for procedural reasons - you generally need to get the Government actively on side.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    TimT said:

    Leon said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    Wow. I missed all that. tim was a grumpy old bugger, but I did like when he went off on tangents about wine or song.
    You can still find him on Twitter. He is often amusingly waspish, as is his wont
    He had a thing about Osborne. Is his twitter handle Gideon, or such?
    Yep
  • isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    No, they weren't real photos of Sean's flat. They were photo's of a doll's house - mocking Sean for living in small accommodation.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    We haven’t spent the last five years insulting them. Our tabloids can be a bit punchy but that’s just our boisterous media.

    Up until AUKUS, the only really hostile acts have come from the EU, and especially France. The overnight hard border across Ireland. The theft of our vaccines. The smearing of Astra Zeneca. The attempts to damage the City, the threats to cut power to Jersey, the disgraceful behaviour with channel migrants (happening for years now). Barnier’s promise to make Brexit ‘so painful the British will regret they ever did it’

    The fact you can’t see any of this just shows how pathetically myopic you’ve become. You’re turning into AC Grayling

    So relations with France are in the freezer for a decade. Fuck em. We can cope
    The EU never smeared the AstraZeneca vaccine. Indeed, the European Medicines Agency has repeatedly said it is both safe and efficacious.

    The people who have more reprehensibly smeared AZ are:

    - Handelsblatt
    and
    - Macron

    There may be more, but they are the primary culprits.

    Edit to add: about three months ago I downloaded the big EU database of vaccine supplies and usage by product and by country, and was very surprised to discover that (outside France), there had been better take-up of AZ percentage-wise than Pfizer. I was going to write a header about it. Then I got distracted by doing something completely different.
    Actually that is not exactly true. Both Merkel and, more importantly, Ursula von der Leyen claimed the UK had rushed the approval of the AZ vaccine and that it was untested. This was a clear attempt to undermine it in the eyes of Europeans. Now you might claim that Merkel was 'only' the Chancellor of Germany but UvdL was and is President of the European Commission.
    Fair enough, I mostly remember UvdL being a total dick with AZ contracts, and had forgotten her earlier actions.

    Ms Merkel did at least redeem herself slightly by taking (for the first dose at least) the AZ vaccine.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,312
    TimT said:

    Leon said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    Wow. I missed all that. tim was a grumpy old bugger, but I did like when he went off on tangents about wine or song.
    You can still find him on Twitter. He is often amusingly waspish, as is his wont
    He had a thing about Osborne. Is his twitter handle Gideon, or such?
    Yes, that's him. He was virulently anti-Corbyn too, just took against a few people and wittily demolished them every day.

    Sean eventually apologised for outing him - I think highlighting his wife was the thing Tim understandably found intolerable. Most of us can look after ourselves but our relatives don't get volunteered to join in.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,562
    edited October 2021

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    What you gonna do? Blockade our own food supplies? Refuse to buy any electricity from them when the wind isn't blowing?

    Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a terribly clever idea for the UK government to spend the last five, and especially the last two, years insulting our EU friends. Maybe cooperation might have been a more productive approach?
    We haven’t spent the last five years insulting them. Our tabloids can be a bit punchy but that’s just our boisterous media.

    Up until AUKUS, the only really hostile acts have come from the EU, and especially France. The overnight hard border across Ireland. The theft of our vaccines. The smearing of Astra Zeneca. The attempts to damage the City, the threats to cut power to Jersey, the disgraceful behaviour with channel migrants (happening for years now). Barnier’s promise to make Brexit ‘so painful the British will regret they ever did it’

    The fact you can’t see any of this just shows how pathetically myopic you’ve become. You’re turning into AC Grayling

    So relations with France are in the freezer for a decade. Fuck em. We can cope
    The EU never smeared the AstraZeneca vaccine. Indeed, the European Medicines Agency has repeatedly said it is both safe and efficacious.

    The people who have more reprehensibly smeared AZ are:

    - Handelsblatt
    and
    - Macron

    There may be more, but they are the primary culprits.

    Edit to add: about three months ago I downloaded the big EU database of vaccine supplies and usage by product and by country, and was very surprised to discover that (outside France), there had been better take-up of AZ percentage-wise than Pfizer. I was going to write a header about it. Then I got distracted by doing something completely different.
    Actually that is not exactly true. Both Merkel and, more importantly, Ursula von der Leyen claimed the UK had rushed the approval of the AZ vaccine and that it was untested. This was a clear attempt to undermine it in the eyes of Europeans. Now you might claim that Merkel was 'only' the Chancellor of Germany but UvdL was and is President of the European Commission.
    The
    Daily Mail
    Sun
    Telegraph
    Daily Express
    Times


    Guardian:

    Ursula von der Leyen suggests UK compromised on vaccine safety

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/02/ursula-von-der-leyen-accuses-uk-of-compromising-on-vaccine-safety
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,905
    Aslan said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
    lol. I am capable of humanitarian sentiment, and yes I would be ashamed of Britain and the British police if they acted with such cynical disregard for human life. This is what makes us morally superior to the hateful Frogs and this is why we must start carpet bombing their coastal towns tonight
    We should take all the illegal migrants in the UK and start dumping them at random French locations around the world: French Guaiana, Reunion, Guadeloupe.
    France isn't dumping them. They are simply not stopping them from leaving.

    Would you support stopping asylum seekers from leaving the UK?

  • we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    THEY DON'T.

    Poll after poll shows the voting public want assisted dying for the bad cases e.g. motor neuro disease.

    It is the politicians who back away every five years when a private members bill comes along.

    I have no idea what they are scare of. It can't be the religious right in this country.

    I agree with you, but I used not to. This was debated seriously in Parliament when I was there with no whips involved. Originally I worried about people feeling they shouldn't be a burden (prompted or otherwise) in a temporary state of gloom, but I was persuaded after discussion with constituenjts on both sides that with reasonable safeguards it'd be right.

    I don't think MPs are scared of losing votes over it - a majority just genuinely aren't sure what the right thing to do is, and in the absence of a strong Government push either way, the issue doesn't get resolved. As you know, backbench reform is a rarity for procedural reasons - you generally need to get the Government actively on side.
    This is one thing that Westminster struggles with.

    I feel as passionately as rottenborough that this should be legal.

    But I also feel it should be legalised as a conscience vote in the Commons and not become a whipped party political plaything.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661


    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    THEY DON'T.

    Poll after poll shows the voting public want assisted dying for the bad cases e.g. motor neuro disease.

    It is the politicians who back away every five years when a private members bill comes along.

    I have no idea what they are scare of. It can't be the religious right in this country.

    I agree with you, but I used not to. This was debated seriously in Parliament when I was there with no whips involved. Originally I worried about people feeling they shouldn't be a burden (prompted or otherwise) in a temporary state of gloom, but I was persuaded after discussion with constituenjts on both sides that with reasonable safeguards it'd be right.

    I don't think MPs are scared of losing votes over it - a majority just genuinely aren't sure what the right thing to do is, and in the absence of a strong Government push either way, the issue doesn't get resolved. As you know, backbench reform is a rarity for procedural reasons - you generally need to get the Government actively on side.
    I find it horribly difficult. As a moral question

    The irony is that ‘assisted dying’ happens all the time, every day, in UK hospitals and hospices. A doctor quietly dials up the morphine and someone is hastened gently to the end

    It’s assisted ‘suicide’ that perplexes us
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,854
    rcs1000 said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    He was doxxed, IIRC.
    That’s my memory of it. Shame. He remains one of the PB greats - hope he will return someday.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924
    edited October 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    Aslan said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
    lol. I am capable of humanitarian sentiment, and yes I would be ashamed of Britain and the British police if they acted with such cynical disregard for human life. This is what makes us morally superior to the hateful Frogs and this is why we must start carpet bombing their coastal towns tonight
    We should take all the illegal migrants in the UK and start dumping them at random French locations around the world: French Guaiana, Reunion, Guadeloupe.
    France isn't dumping them. They are simply not stopping them from leaving.

    Would you support stopping asylum seekers from leaving the UK?
    Indeed. Should the French Police go in mob handed to prevent folk from not breaking French law?
    Many seem to think they should. Many of them see themselves as Libertarian too.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    rcs1000 said:

    Aslan said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
    lol. I am capable of humanitarian sentiment, and yes I would be ashamed of Britain and the British police if they acted with such cynical disregard for human life. This is what makes us morally superior to the hateful Frogs and this is why we must start carpet bombing their coastal towns tonight
    We should take all the illegal migrants in the UK and start dumping them at random French locations around the world: French Guaiana, Reunion, Guadeloupe.
    France isn't dumping them. They are simply not stopping them from leaving.

    Would you support stopping asylum seekers from leaving the UK?
    I’ll say it again. It’s much more than that. The French authorities are standing by, deliberately doing nothing, as men women and children climb into boats and attempt horribly dangerous crossings; crossings which have already killed dozens

    I know it’s unusual for me to be a bleeding-heart liberal, but I hope and believe the UK would be a bit better than this
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661
    edited October 2021
    dixiedean said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Aslan said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
    lol. I am capable of humanitarian sentiment, and yes I would be ashamed of Britain and the British police if they acted with such cynical disregard for human life. This is what makes us morally superior to the hateful Frogs and this is why we must start carpet bombing their coastal towns tonight
    We should take all the illegal migrants in the UK and start dumping them at random French locations around the world: French Guaiana, Reunion, Guadeloupe.
    France isn't dumping them. They are simply not stopping them from leaving.

    Would you support stopping asylum seekers from leaving the UK?
    Indeed. Should the French Police go in mob handed to prevent folk from not breaking French law?
    Many seem to think they should. Many of them see themselves as Libertarian too.
    They are breaking the law. They are wilfully and terribly endangering the lives of children
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,854
    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    Aslan said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    dixiedean said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:


    The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
    ...

    Hmm.

    The promise:

    When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

    The reality:

    Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

    He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

    “At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”


    http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

    As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

    Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.
    I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

    It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.
    Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
    To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
    You do see the issue here?
    Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

    It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.
    Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

    https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world
    Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
    But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

    Britain doesn’t really have that option.
    For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

    And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers
    This is true.

    Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

    The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.
    It's not like the UK is stopping high immigration.
    No, it's people like me who will have the competition in high wage sectors. People in lower wage sectors will now have very large NTBs protecting their pay rates. Our economy is going to look much closer to Switzerland in 4-7 years.
    I think you also should note that both Switzerland (and Germany) have very good vocational employment systems, that really help ensure that those young people who won't end up in financial services have the skills needed to thrive.

    We need to make sure that we're not dealing with the symptoms (immigration of people with plumbing skills), rather than the cause (lack of Brits with plumbing skills).
    I find it amazing, indeed depressing, that increasing numbers submit to the financial abuse of university.

    Even with the university experience being negatively affected by covid and increased opportunities in the employment market.
    Maybe they don't want to pluck turkeys or harvest cabbages for the rest of their days?
    I didn't know Leicestershire was still in the middle ages.

    Elsewhere we now have a wide range of jobs between university educated and agricultural worker.
    Yes, but the key thing is that University offers the opportunity (not certainty) of more interesting work, and work with prospect of advancement. I don't blame people for looking for it.
    Quite apart from that it offers the opportunity to move away from home, in reasonable security, experience a completely different part of the country, and meet hundreds of new folk your own age from all backgrounds, without your parents or relatives or neighbours knowing all your business.
    It really isn't about a purely financial cost/benefit analysis.
    Indeed you have just identified its strongest suit.
  • rcs1000 said:

    Aslan said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
    lol. I am capable of humanitarian sentiment, and yes I would be ashamed of Britain and the British police if they acted with such cynical disregard for human life. This is what makes us morally superior to the hateful Frogs and this is why we must start carpet bombing their coastal towns tonight
    We should take all the illegal migrants in the UK and start dumping them at random French locations around the world: French Guaiana, Reunion, Guadeloupe.
    France isn't dumping them. They are simply not stopping them from leaving.

    Would you support stopping asylum seekers from leaving the UK?
    I think I would probably prevent them taking children on dangerous sea voyages in unsuitable craft. There is nothing un-libertarian about preventing child endangerment.

    But of course more generally as we know my views on migration are not very popular and probably also not very practical. In my eyes this should be a non issue.
  • TimT said:

    Leon said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    Wow. I missed all that. tim was a grumpy old bugger, but I did like when he went off on tangents about wine or song.
    You can still find him on Twitter. He is often amusingly waspish, as is his wont
    He had a thing about Osborne. Is his twitter handle Gideon, or such?
    Yes, that's him. He was virulently anti-Corbyn too, just took against a few people and wittily demolished them every day.

    Sean eventually apologised for outing him - I think highlighting his wife was the thing Tim understandably found intolerable. Most of us can look after ourselves but our relatives don't get volunteered to join in.
    Well I've learned something new today.

    I always thought it was Plato who outed tim.

    I wasn't reading when the bust up happened and it had all been deleted afterwards.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924
    edited October 2021
    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Aslan said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
    lol. I am capable of humanitarian sentiment, and yes I would be ashamed of Britain and the British police if they acted with such cynical disregard for human life. This is what makes us morally superior to the hateful Frogs and this is why we must start carpet bombing their coastal towns tonight
    We should take all the illegal migrants in the UK and start dumping them at random French locations around the world: French Guaiana, Reunion, Guadeloupe.
    France isn't dumping them. They are simply not stopping them from leaving.

    Would you support stopping asylum seekers from leaving the UK?
    Indeed. Should the French Police go in mob handed to prevent folk from not breaking French law?
    Many seem to think they should. Many of them see themselves as Libertarian too.
    They are breaking the law. They are wilfully and terribly endangering the lives of children
    The French have always had a relaxed attitude to Health and Safety. One may almost call it laissez -faire. I remember walking on the Pont du Gard. No barriers. Just a sign.
    It is close to...well Libertarian.
    Anyways. I think we can agree. The EU was better before the imbeciles of the EPP took over.
    Idiots!
    We may be fortunate enough to have some Social Democrats back in charge soon.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,854
    edited October 2021

    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    No, they weren't real photos of Sean's flat. They were photo's of a doll's house - mocking Sean for living in small accommodation.
    Sean apologised for the doxxing, as I recall, and asked that Tim returned. But he never did.

    Edit: I see Nick has posted similarly.
  • dixiedean said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Aslan said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
    lol. I am capable of humanitarian sentiment, and yes I would be ashamed of Britain and the British police if they acted with such cynical disregard for human life. This is what makes us morally superior to the hateful Frogs and this is why we must start carpet bombing their coastal towns tonight
    We should take all the illegal migrants in the UK and start dumping them at random French locations around the world: French Guaiana, Reunion, Guadeloupe.
    France isn't dumping them. They are simply not stopping them from leaving.

    Would you support stopping asylum seekers from leaving the UK?
    Indeed. Should the French Police go in mob handed to prevent folk from not breaking French law?
    Many seem to think they should. Many of them see themselves as Libertarian too.
    It's up to them whether they wish to or not.

    If they don't wish to that's fair enough ... But they shouldn't then take our money saying that they will do if we pay them.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,473


    we were told Johnson is a libertarian.

    If I choose to end my life it due to extreme ill health it is none of the state's fucking business.

    Johnson perfectly understands the British voters on this. They have a self-image of themselves as libertarian, they love politicans who talk about freedom. But they really hate the actual thing.
    THEY DON'T.

    Poll after poll shows the voting public want assisted dying for the bad cases e.g. motor neuro disease.

    It is the politicians who back away every five years when a private members bill comes along.

    I have no idea what they are scare of. It can't be the religious right in this country.

    I agree with you, but I used not to. This was debated seriously in Parliament when I was there with no whips involved. Originally I worried about people feeling they shouldn't be a burden (prompted or otherwise) in a temporary state of gloom, but I was persuaded after discussion with constituenjts on both sides that with reasonable safeguards it'd be right.

    I don't think MPs are scared of losing votes over it - a majority just genuinely aren't sure what the right thing to do is, and in the absence of a strong Government push either way, the issue doesn't get resolved. As you know, backbench reform is a rarity for procedural reasons - you generally need to get the Government actively on side.
    I am turning in, but have grave doubts about "assisted dying", despite my experiences of seeing people suffer in their last months, including my Mother in Law over the summer.

    I am a Christian, but that is not the reason. It is a very slippery slope for the state to decide (and it would be state regulated) as to who gets bumped off as too inconvenient.

    There are well established and humane care pathways for terminal illness, but should we go the way of Stangl? I hope not. If you think that I am being hyperbolic, doesn't some of this remind you of "Canada"?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1127413/Cashing-despair-Suicide-clinic-Dignitas-profit-obsessed-killing-machine-claims-ex-worker.html
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,661

    TimT said:

    Leon said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    TimT said:

    isam said:

    rcs1000 said:

    *** MODERATOR WARNING ***

    Anyone posting about the most consequential things of the 21st Century who misses pb, will be subject to ban.

    I was surprised the night Tim flounced wasn’t on the original list
    Anyone remember what he flounced about?
    I was having a ding dong with him about something or the other that night, but the flounce was due to him posting photos of Sean T’s flat in London, Sean asking him to stop, tim not stopping, then Sean posting an article revealing Tim’s full name, details about him, and interview with his wife!

    I think
    Wow. I missed all that. tim was a grumpy old bugger, but I did like when he went off on tangents about wine or song.
    You can still find him on Twitter. He is often amusingly waspish, as is his wont
    He had a thing about Osborne. Is his twitter handle Gideon, or such?
    Yes, that's him. He was virulently anti-Corbyn too, just took against a few people and wittily demolished them every day.

    Sean eventually apologised for outing him - I think highlighting his wife was the thing Tim understandably found intolerable. Most of us can look after ourselves but our relatives don't get volunteered to join in.
    Well I've learned something new today.

    I always thought it was Plato who outed tim.

    I wasn't reading when the bust up happened and it had all been deleted afterwards.
    I was just a lurker etc but it was Plato pinpointing his house via Google maps, and putting it on here, including Streetview, that finally saw him leave
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924

    dixiedean said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Aslan said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    That video from France is quite extraordinary. The police doing less than NOTHING - to the extent that they are actively facilitating migrants to make illegal and often lethally dangerous voyages across the Channel. If that dinghy capsized and 40 people drowned, the deaths would be entirely on the French cops, who could have disabled the engine in 2 minutes

    And we are PAYING the French to ‘police the coast’?

    Patel will have to do something. We now have to treat France as a hostile country. Fuck any co-operation on anything, ever

    Imagine if we had a migrant in Northern Ireland. Would we really get the police to stop migrants if they were on their way down South to the Republic?

    Norway has a policy of encouraging self deportation (to the extent that they don't even bother to deport migrants themselves). How is that very different?
    The difference is the danger of the crossing. Dozens have died in the Channel

    If it was happening the other way, yes I believe there’d be intense pressure on our police to stop any and every boat, to avoid drownings. You would not see scenes like the one Sky video’d today on the French coast
    I never saw you as a mollycoddling socialist, nanny state knows best. But, hey, you learn something every day.
    lol. I am capable of humanitarian sentiment, and yes I would be ashamed of Britain and the British police if they acted with such cynical disregard for human life. This is what makes us morally superior to the hateful Frogs and this is why we must start carpet bombing their coastal towns tonight
    We should take all the illegal migrants in the UK and start dumping them at random French locations around the world: French Guaiana, Reunion, Guadeloupe.
    France isn't dumping them. They are simply not stopping them from leaving.

    Would you support stopping asylum seekers from leaving the UK?
    Indeed. Should the French Police go in mob handed to prevent folk from not breaking French law?
    Many seem to think they should. Many of them see themselves as Libertarian too.
    It's up to them whether they wish to or not.

    If they don't wish to that's fair enough ... But they shouldn't then take our money saying that they will do if we pay them.
    Indeed.
    Foolish to think that the solution is always money.
  • TheValiantTheValiant Posts: 1,693

    JohnO said:

    What happened to FTPA? Has it been repealed yet?

    Repeal legislation currently going through Parliament.
    Shame. It was the best constitutional innovation we've had in many decades.
    Was it? It decoupled Confidence motions from other legislation. It allowed (between January and May of 2019) the government to lose Brexit legislation by a majority of 230, yet the next day win a confidence motion by 20.

    The government of the day couldn't pass any legislation, but the opposition couldn't VoNC the government.

    It was a pile of shit, because it never foresaw such a problem could arise.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924

    JohnO said:

    What happened to FTPA? Has it been repealed yet?

    Repeal legislation currently going through Parliament.
    Shame. It was the best constitutional innovation we've had in many decades.
    Was it? It decoupled Confidence motions from other legislation. It allowed (between January and May of 2019) the government to lose Brexit legislation by a majority of 230, yet the next day win a confidence motion by 20.

    The government of the day couldn't pass any legislation, but the opposition couldn't VoNC the government.

    It was a pile of shit, because it never foresaw such a problem could arise.
    Yep. Cobbled together crap cos the media couldn't bear the thought of 4 days without a government.
    Even though other countries manage months.
    Worst government of my lifetime by a distance.
This discussion has been closed.