politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Given the appalling weather let’s be thankful that yesterday w
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Given the appalling weather let’s be thankful that yesterday wasn’t a general election or a referendum
There were 4 by-election taking place local councils yesterday and the results should make interesting reading because these happened on the worst Thursday for the weather across the country in decades.
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/01/trump-steel-tariffs-432143
The last time we had that was designed to prevent a deal with the EU, not to achieve one.
Road to Brexit? More like an arse-of-bag,(eschewing the French there, naturellement).
Is trump applying this to all grades, if he wanted to clobber China a 50% tariff on mild would have done the trick..
Everyone’s favourite cartoonist nails it as usual
https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/969274764916396033/photo/1
Anyone who has been following Arsenal's results for the season?
Me thinks "should have gone to Specsavers" comes to mind ....
It is hard to see anyone uniting behind the flatfooted Theresa.
Here was her on the NI border in June 2016:
https://twitter.com/Open_Britain/status/969191104187953152?ref_src=twcamp^copy|twsrc^android|twgr^copy|twcon^7090|twterm^3
Lots of hardcore Remainers are determined to think she was talking about them. She wasn’t.
I am off to the local Sheriff Court today. am allowing an hour for getting out of the village.
What I want, if we have to leave the EU which we do, is to minimise the economic disruption. But unfortunately to do so we would have to concede some ongoing sovereignty to the EU. It is therefore doubly frustrating the EU are going out of their way to confirm the views of Leavers that the EU is run by tenth-rate crooks whom we need for national survival to break away from entirely, while we are not making our case effectively that even if attainable their dream is not worth the pain it will cause.
In the entire history of my school, this is the second time it has closed because of snow.
The other was in December!
The only thing Remainers will accept as a "compromise" on Brexit is for Brexit not to happen. There is no common ground to be had with such people.
The absurd refusal to discuss the future relationship for over a year is now coming back to bite both sides who would both gain substantially from a close, free trade relationship where the UK continues to contribute to a series of EU based institutions in exchange for associate membership. The time to achieve this is becoming increasingly short.
I'm not sure what they feel about UEFA, incidentally, or the European Cup!
Those two aside, however, as a Remainer I'm not sure that 'Ourselves alone" to misquote Sinn Fein, works in the world today. We are no longer an island standing on coal and surrounded by fish, nor is the Royal Navy's world-wide reach enough to protect our trade.
The world has moved on, and ver the past 50 years many or our main manufacturers have developed links with partners, or indeed are themselves international organisation.
last nights #BBCQT was quite depressing. Blackpool keen to get Brexit but completely unable to explain how it would break their town's spiral of decline.
What is our recourse?
= meaningless guff. I preferred the owl promise.
The other problem the pro-EU lobby (in which I don't include myself even as a Remain voter) has is one of credibility. We were told staying out of the Euro was economic suicide. It turned out the opposite was true - going in would have crashed it entirely in 2008. We were told that we had to give up part of our rebate to get reforms. We did, but we got no reforms. We were told that if we voted to leave the economy would shrink rapidly and immediately. It didn't. We were told planes would have to be grounded. They weren't and even the EU have quietly dropped that claim.
We're now told that leaving will cause the break-up of the UK, the withdrawal of all banks and car manufacturers and the destruction of the NHS (or as the tweeter puts it, 'national suicide'). And yet, with that track record, it just looks like silly hysteria. Even if it is true, it just doesn't cut through any more and turns people further off the EU with the simple attitude that they are a bunch of sore losers.
Leavers have reached the point where a conflicting view firmly expressed is offensive. But one of their own can label someone with a conflicting view a traitor and it passes without comment.
Edit - and of course the poster who uses the word 'traitor' most often is an ardent Remainer, and I must say I think TSE's choice of language is Reckless.
I realise this may be hard to compute, but there are plenty of people who see Brexit as an unmitigated national catastrophe. They are entitled to express those views and they are not going to choose gentle metaphors.
Brexit will be shite, and will waste a decade or two without tackling the real issues facing the country and indeed will make many of them worse. It will not be fatal though.
Trump's tarriffs and Putin's missiles are larger issues than Brexit geopolitically !
The point is if it isn't fatal, it's not suicide. The irony of the Euro predictions of course is that if we had joined it might have proved literally fatal (as in - led to a war over the economic collapse of Europe).
https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/969467088426250240?ref_src=twcamp^copy|twsrc^android|twgr^copy|twcon^7090|twterm^3
Not to mention how wrong elite opinion was on the Euro.
Any sensible Remainer needs to take these on board.
I will be listening charitably to May today, though I expect to be disappointed.
Their superior wisdom has been ignored and the opinion of lesser beings has won the day. This is intolerable. Clearly there is something wrong with democracy if this can happen. That's why they would prefer Brexit to be a total failure. Even if it isn't, they will pretend it is. Admitting they were wrong will never happen. Their subjective judgement must be correct.
You'd have to have a heart of stone not to smile at their discomfort. I do my best not to, but it's difficult.
Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVDH0nsJ0jA
There's always a risk of a deal breaking down, up to and including marriage. Who on earth thought that was something sensible to include?
But Xi Jinping's rise to power unprecedented since Mao's time comes at a point where China is increasingly flexing its economic muscles.
The wind is up here. It was rather chilly.
Mr. Jessop, I agree. Xi's taken a number of significant steps. He immediately began by increasing military spending, then had sabre-rattling over the disputed islands with Japan as well as the South China Sea land grab. He ended the decades-long informal truce amongst the Communist Party's upper echelons when it comes to internal bloodletting/corruption investigations. Then he got Xi Jinping thought (or similar) put in the same bracket as Mao's own views. And now he's getting rid, seemingly, of term limits so he can continue in power.
Closer to home, a significant week. On the 4th we have both the Italian election and the German coalition result.
I wonder why.
The last fews days have not been good for remain with Barnier's so called threat to the UK constitution, Major talking to remainers, and Blair lecturing the EU over their collective blame for Brexit.
Unsurprisingly the remain argument is not shifting opinion and Barnier has allowed TM to be seen to stand up for the UK against the EU which is always popular for a British PM.
Their are some fair minded remainers who want to listen to TM today with an open mind but the extreme remainers would only be satisfied if she called Brexit off and that is not on the table
4. Consistent with open outward-looking European democracy
is directly contradicted by test one
1. Respect the referendum
which was vote for a more closed, inward-looking anti-European Brexitocracy
Perhaps you should consider why the great and the good still don't want to have anything to do with it. Your explanation might be emotionally satisfying for committed Leavers but it lacks plausibility as an explanation for a group decision.
Just as Canada is an American country, but is not part of the United States, sometimes wrongly called 'America'.
Brexit is consuming PB, just as it is consuming good government in this country.
It didn't. It wasn't fit for purpose. The British people took the very brave and very principled position to tell these unelected determinants of European direction to stick their shitty little Project back up their arses.
Why the present tense?
Would it be possible to put in effect a situation where, for example, a Free Trade Zone is created one mile either side of the border so that it is up to the individual or company to act before leaving that zone to declare anything that needs declaring.
What it does allow by way of a fudge is that it's up to either side how hard they enforce this, removes the need for obvious and physical border posts which psychologically keeps those who object appeased, it allows those whose jobs and lives depend on the close business across the border to carry on as before, could open up opportunities for manufacturers or other industries to set up new businesses in that free trade zone where they need UK or EU components to be part of their product to do so with less red tape and could also allow entrepreneurs to set up businesses in that free trade zone to handle, log and report declarations to the customs authorities on either side on behalf of the state thus removing the involvement of the state and its antagonism to certain parties?
Could be completely unworkable on WTO grounds etc but I wish people would batter away with more wild theories rather than just accept that there is only a certain way it can be solved which will not work for one side or another.
Having lived in Geneva for six years basically on the swiss French border I loved that there was effectively no border in main parts but manned crossings for those who used main routes and where declarations could be made but appreciate the relationship between Switzerland and France is different from a non-EU UK and the EU.....
Thinking back to Major:
What he did: 3 line whip, no referendum.
What he advocates: free vote, second referendum.
But then I look at Brexit ministers, and can't entirely blame the rhetoric...
Let us also not forget that in the United States the New Hampshire Republican and Democratic presidential primaries are always held in February often amidst sub zero temperatures and heavy snow yet always get a good turnout as the result attracts global attention and can make or break a candidate
Its never too early for smutty innuendo, but rather chilly replenishing her bird feeders this morning. While they are her birds, refilling is a "boy job" it seems on a day like today...
This is a meme that has been allowed to grow; a less maladroit politician would have dealt with the matter months ago.
Because you'll be living in a swamp.....
On that front he succeeded brilliantly and under his stewardship and Clarke's the economic foundations were laid for a truly unprecedented era of prosperity. The political damage he caused by doing it is another matter, and we are now seeing this played out.
However, as he (correctly, in my view) believes leaving the EU will cause economic damage his position is consistent.
In my teens and twenties, I suffered around 12 years of fairly debilitating pain that meant, at times, I could not even walk. There were many times I seriously considered doing what this brave young lady has done:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-devon-43228951/i-had-my-leg-cut-off-to-get-my-life-back
That this is going to apply to Mexico and Canada in the middle of the NAFTA renegotiation is not encouraging.
In any event, the details don't really matter if this end up sparking off a round of retaliatory tariffs, or worse a full blown trade war. Britain has put itself in a remarkably vulnerable position.
It might all blow over, but relying on that just as we cut ourselves out of a massive free trade block is taking a very large risk.
The reason is that the alternative is unthinkable. “Citizen of nowhere” - or “heimatlos” - was a slur used by fascists in the 1920s and 30s to justify racist and eugenicist policies. “Pure Germans” had a home, whereas the “heimatlos” had a trans-national loyalty that (in this reading) was actively against Germany’s interests. Thus the heimatlos must be subjugated or, eventually, eliminated. It’s pretty obvious who the slur referred to. Philipp Blom’s ‘Fracture’ is very good on this (and a superb book in general).
May should have had advisors who knew this context and excised the phrase. Evidently she didn’t. So I believe it’s not evidence of malice, more of the inept tin-earedness that has characterised her tenure.
The time for a message of reconciliation was the first day of her premiership. That was her opportunity to say: the country is split 50/50; we need a solution that both Remain and Leave voters can live with. She chose not to, and instead to indulge the Leave ultras for months. It’s too late now to go back on that. The country is divided and her speech will be scorned by both camps.
http://app.ft.com/mcdonnell?sectionid=home
We actually have a shadow chancellor who says he won’t take money from ‘bourgeois organisations’.
Corbyn and (especially) McDonnell in power will be an absolute catastrophe for this country.
"Flooding and Debris is blocking the rail line at Dawlish, Network Rail has said.
All Great Western Railway and CrossCountry services have been suspended due to "significant damage".
Network Rail added that there will be a flood assessment at 10:00 but it is unlikely any trains will be running before lunch "at the least"."
The character of PB has changed thanks to Brexit. There have been some fantastic debates on here over the years, but not any more.
Go for it Mike. Purge Brexit posts and perhaps you will get PB back again
Mrs May evidently believes in holding elections every two years, so by your analogy, we must be due that second referendum about now.