Another immediate move would be to block Chinese state companies from investing here and elsewhere in the west and put up barriers for non-state Chinese companies as well. Our companies will just have to deal with the blowback. It's the kind of stuff Boris and Joe need to be discussing in a couple of weeks to ensure that Western companies don't fall into the hands of the Chinese state. The EU is very clearly an unreliable partner in this.
Boris has an opportunity over China for the UK to mend fences with Biden, given the way the EU has sought to throw its hat in with Xi. Be fascinating to see how it plays out.
Why on earth should we need to 'mend fences' with him, what are we meant to have done?
It might be good politics for Boris to acknowledge that in the hurly-burly of the Brexit negotiations, we may have spooked the Democrats' horses over Ireland.... But we always had it in hand, always just negotiating positions, never a chance of blowing up the GFA, etc etc etc.
A tale of two cities: Liverpool and Manchester. One in tier 2 from the end of lockdown lite at Dec 2 until Dec 30, then tier 3 until the current lockdown. The other in tier 3 then 4.
Liverpool went from half Manchester's case level to double in the space of three and a half weeks. Now looking likely to get worse than London.
Cockney Covid? Its the only thing that makes sense is it looks like Cockney Covid has gotten embedded within Liverpool?
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
It's just a different mechanism and step one for the west is to extricate ourselves from the Chinese economy which means moving supply chains to other parts of the world.
I guess that is theoretically possible, but without draconian restrictions on business and an acceptance of huge increases in inflation for consumer goods it is difficult to imagine it really working. I personally think that while the Chinese regime definitely stinks, the West should simply bide it's time. Eventually their form of capitalism, highly corrupt though it is, will drive political change. Let us not forget that our very imperfect system of democracy has evolved that way largely gradually over the last 150 years. It is underpinned by a system of law that the Chinese are a long way off. That said, we still have a long way to go!
Legally enforce standards for companies outsourcing - if your phone is made with slave labour, you get fined.
Think of it as a Morality Tax, to go with Carbon Taxes.
Yes I think that is sensible. The issue is, however, that China will pretty soon move out of the "slave labour" phase. I put it in quotation marks because I don't know specific examples although I'm sure there are many. It will move to the next phase where Chinese workers all have some kind of economic power.
So saying this anti-Slave Labour measure will protect us is a bit Maginot Line-ish.
Like most things in the real world - it's not one solution. It's a bag of things that add up
- checks on outsourcing - national security rules (5G) on ownership - tariff equalisation - promoting supply chain diversity (not necessarily UK) - tax breaks, points awarded in bidding for government contracts - etc
There is nothing that will work over night. Nothing. It takes time Ito turn a ship - the best thing too do is to start to turn the wheel.
Another immediate move would be to block Chinese state companies from investing here and elsewhere in the west and put up barriers for non-state Chinese companies as well. Our companies will just have to deal with the blowback. It's the kind of stuff Boris and Joe need to be discussing in a couple of weeks to ensure that Western companies don't fall into the hands of the Chinese state. The EU is very clearly an unreliable partner in this.
Boris has an opportunity over China for the UK to mend fences with Biden, given the way the EU has sought to throw its hat in with Xi. Be fascinating to see how it plays out.
Why on earth should we need to 'mend fences' with him, what are we meant to have done?
It might be good politics for Boris to acknowledge that in the hurly-burly of the Brexit negotiations, we may have spooked the Democrats' horses over Ireland.... But we always had it in hand, always just negotiating positions, never a chance of blowing up the GFA, etc etc etc.
Now, about Brussels cosying up to Beijing....
I think Biden knew that full well, he's a smart cookie. His responses were always caveated and about if there became a threat to the GFA (not that this was a threat to the GFA itself).
Germany reports its highest 24-hour death toll so far – 1,188. There were 31,849 new infections, the Robert Koch Institute reports, but the actual figures may be higher still because of fewer tests done over Christmas
Germany's record is looking a little more tarnished.
It seems as though the best politician to have in charge dealing with the pandemic is Chicken Licken.
The only solution to the China problem is a slow removal of China from Western supply chains and isolating any country which allies with them with economic sanctions.
I've suggested a China Repression Tariff Escalator as a way of doing this gradually in a way that clearly links it to ongoing Chinese repression.
1% a year increase in tariff for each of these issues as long as they are unresolved: 1. End of "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong. 2. Mass imprisonment and re-education camps of the Uighur. 3. Occupation of Tibet. 4. Rule of Law / Free Speech within China. 5. Aggressive territorial expansionism: claims to South China Sea, Taiwan, etc.
So starting off at 5% increase each year. Should enable companies to move supply chains without suffering from a sudden shock.
A tale of two cities: Liverpool and Manchester. One in tier 2 from the end of lockdown lite at Dec 2 until Dec 30, then tier 3 until the current lockdown. The other in tier 3 then 4.
Liverpool went from half Manchester's case level to double in the space of three and a half weeks. Now looking likely to get worse than London.
Cockney Covid? Its the only thing that makes sense is it looks like Cockney Covid has gotten embedded within Liverpool?
Or tier 2 was an awful lot better at spreading it.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
With respect, I sniff a bit of complacency here. The illiberal right have quite the grip on the narrative in this country right now, and have built a formidable beachhead within the Conservative Party. Boris Johnson, whose own position in this is shrouded in mixed signals, did a lot of damage to the liberal credentials of the Conservatives with his purge. And whatever the reasons and motivations, the idea that the Conservatives are now the party of Priti Patel but not Ken Clarke is something worthy of a moment's reflection.
I'm not saying it's over for you, far from it. You're right that it's doing "OK", as you put it. But I would say "only OK".
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
So you are saying at the margins we will export less to the EU. What you don't say is that at the margins they will export less to us, merely referring to the additional costs. There is no reason that there might be less choice but there will be an effect on prices (small). Given our £80bn deficit in goods with the EU why do you say that these marginal differences, which if equivalent will reduce our deficit and make domestic producers more competitive) is a "huge mistake"?
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
Not the case unfortunately because the UK has no choice but to import stuff it can't easily produce itself from somewhere. It will only import from outside of the EU if those imports have an inherent cost benefit that more than compensates for the additional new cost of EU produce. Bear in mind Brexit is levelling up EU import costs to the same as the best elsewhere. It doesn't make the RoW cheaper. EU will still win on transport costs, being closer than anywhere else. Long story short there is limited scope for the UK to substitute EU imports for RoW imports or UK domestic production. It will continue to import from the EU at a higher cost to the consumer.
The EU will lose some of its previous trade to the UK (also because the UK will now be relatively poorer and can afford less). However it can repatriate supply chains from the UK to the EU and that will compensate to some extent. The UK is finding itself squeezed out of international supply chains.
There is nevertheless a risk for the EU. Which is that if the arrangement gets too one-sided, the UK will say, sod this and then the EU will lose its leverage. The EU wants leverage over the UK.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
You think Boris Johnson has sufficient political principles to be categorised?
I reckon "chancer" is the only category it would be safe to put him into.
If he was such a "chancer" he'd have found it easier to jump on the bandwagon and be super authoritarian over the past 12 months with Covid. Theresa May certainly would have done so. Some may think that is better, I do not.
I think he is an opportunist at times but instinctively he is a liberal Conservative, yes. Maybe I'm biased projecting what I believe onto him but any time a philosophy shines through it does seem to be liberal Conservativism.
According to this (right-wing) lawyer the offences that those who assaulted the Capitol on Wednesday could be charged with are pretty wide ranging: go to 13:08 for example...
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It is easier to exert negative influence (ie veto) than positive influence (ie a financial services agreeement) inside the EU.
The EU is not the be-all and end-all of course. However, if Britain wishes to regain a measure of influence with European peers it now has to pay for it via defence budget. It has surrendered a key lever of soft power.
Which is why the EU is a flawed and sclerotic institution. It has a one directional ratchet. Once something has passed, just once, it becomes almost impossible to reverse it.
It is hard to change the EU because it is a club of 28 (now 27). But - in Europe - it is the only club going.
We’ve now left the club so we’ve substituted reasonable influence (as a large member of the club), with very little.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When we've developed an independent alternative. I've spoken against Trident here a lot.
Trident is useless. Literally, useless. I cannot conceive of a situation where the UK alone would use nuclear weapons to defend its interests where the US would not also act.
There are many, many situations we face around the globe where our nuclear weapons are of no deterrence value at all. Name me one terrorist group that gives a shit about what upgrade of nukes we currently have in place? What does terrify them is the idea of intervention by a state-of-the-art SAS, backed up by drones. A Trident missile can't spend months acting as a taxi driver in the hot-spots of the world.
Special Forces are a far, far better spend of the defence budget to my mind.
You obviously needed warming up this morning Mark. That was a brilliant post (in my opinion).
Unfortunately in recent days I have had a tendency to like conflicting posts so I'm now just waiting for the counter argument.
The only solution to the China problem is a slow removal of China from Western supply chains and isolating any country which allies with them with economic sanctions.
I've suggested a China Repression Tariff Escalator as a way of doing this gradually in a way that clearly links it to ongoing Chinese repression.
1% a year increase in tariff for each of these issues as long as they are unresolved: 1. End of "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong. 2. Mass imprisonment and re-education camps of the Uighur. 3. Occupation of Tibet. 4. Rule of Law / Free Speech within China. 5. Aggressive territorial expansionism: claims to South China Sea, Taiwan, etc.
So starting off at 5% increase each year. Should enable companies to move supply chains without suffering from a sudden shock.
Implemented by the UK unilaterally or with international agreement?
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
I'd be happiest with our power generated not by Chinese-of-whatever-flavour nuclear, in cahoots with the French, but from our tides using our own domestic engineering resources. Similarly, once your lights staying on is dependant upon the whims of Putin not turning the gas taps off, you are already strategically compromised.
Agreed on all counts.
The Hinckley Point project has always looked bizarre to me, I have never understood it. Another bad decision from the Cameron-Osborne era.
Why invest in our own nuclear capabilies with Forgemasters when we can pay the French and Chinese a multi x markup to have them do it for us?
Just the £37 billion state subsidy required to make Hinkley C happen. Then Sizewell....
A few tens of billions here, a few tens of billions there - and you are soon talking serious money.
And don't forget, on top of that are the costs to abandon nuclear facilities in this country.
"[The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority] publishes a range of estimates that could potentially be realistic. Based on the best data now available, different assumptions could produce figures somewhere between between £99 billion and £232 billion."
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
Boris is of course so liberal he has ended free movement to and from the EU
While liberalising movement with the rest of the world, which has got less attention.
Liberalising movement with the rest of the world and not discriminating in favour of predominantly white Europeans only is the right thing to do. It isn't what eg Farage would have done, or May.
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
So you are saying at the margins we will export less to the EU. What you don't say is that at the margins they will export less to us, merely referring to the additional costs. There is no reason that there might be less choice but there will be an effect on prices (small). Given our £80bn deficit in goods with the EU why do you say that these marginal differences, which if equivalent will reduce our deficit and make domestic producers more competitive) is a "huge mistake"?
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
We hurt, the EU hurts, and the Chinese look on and smile. Well done, Brexiteers.
(Oh, that's almost a haiku )
No you miss the point again. The friction will be reduced to trivial levels, far lower than the friction there is in importing from or exporting to China, because it is in the EU's interests to make it so. Had we run a surplus with the EU then I suspect that their position would have been very different. Which rather makes the point about the irrationality of those who claim it is essential that we maintain this damaging relationship on exactly the same terms as have been damaging us for the last 20 years.
I would emphasise that most of the "fault", to the extent that is relevant at all, that membership of the SM has been so ruinous lies with this country.
We have run policies excessively focused on consumption because these are politically popular. We have not saved or invested enough to remain competitive. We are very bad at training those below the elite University level. We are very bad at converting the research done at elite University levels into new businesses. We take a very short term view of investment and have an excessively short term bonus culture. We don't train our managers very well. We have not worked hard enough on our infrastructure. We have not "played the game" of State aid at all well.
All bar the last of these is our fault, not the fault of the EU. Even the last is ultimately our fault. The EU have benefited from these failures and want to continue doing so. Why wouldn't they? The test of Brexit is whether we can start to address our own problems (and I fully acknowledge that EU membership did not in any way stop us from addressing these decades ago).
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
With respect, I sniff a bit of complacency here. The illiberal right have quite the grip on the narrative in this country right now, and have built a formidable beachhead within the Conservative Party. Boris Johnson, whose own position in this is shrouded in mixed signals, did a lot of damage to the liberal credentials of the Conservatives with his purge. And whatever the reasons and motivations, the idea that the Conservatives are now the party of Priti Patel but not Ken Clarke is something worthy of a moment's reflection.
I'm not saying it's over for you, far from it. You're right that it's doing "OK", as you put it. But I would say "only OK".
You raise a good point which continues to worry me. We have just seen in the US what happens when a political party is captured by populists and extremists.
That process is well underway in what’s left of the Tory Party, and unfortunately the membership do get to choose the next Leader.
This is the *not* the same party which chose Cameron.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When we've developed an independent alternative. I've spoken against Trident here a lot.
Trident is useless. Literally, useless. I cannot conceive of a situation where the UK alone would use nuclear weapons to defend its interests where the US would not also act.
There are many, many situations we face around the globe where our nuclear weapons are of no deterrence value at all. Name me one terrorist group that gives a shit about what upgrade of nukes we currently have in place? What does terrify them is the idea of intervention by a state-of-the-art SAS, backed up by drones. A Trident missile can't spend months acting as a taxi driver in the hot-spots of the world.
Special Forces are a far, far better spend of the defence budget to my mind.
You need both, you can beat terrorists with special forces and drones, you cannot ward off Putin, Xi and Kim Jong Un just with them
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
You think Boris Johnson has sufficient political principles to be categorised?
I reckon "chancer" is the only category it would be safe to put him into.
Show me the successful politician who ISN'T an opportunist.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
With respect, I sniff a bit of complacency here. The illiberal right have quite the grip on the narrative in this country right now, and have built a formidable beachhead within the Conservative Party. Boris Johnson, whose own position in this is shrouded in mixed signals, did a lot of damage to the liberal credentials of the Conservatives with his purge. And whatever the reasons and motivations, the idea that the Conservatives are now the party of Priti Patel but not Ken Clarke is something worthy of a moment's reflection.
I'm not saying it's over for you, far from it. You're right that it's doing "OK", as you put it. But I would say "only OK".
Ken Clarke was a dinosaur that was long overdue retirement. A great man in his day, but his day is long since over.
According to this (right-wing) lawyer the offences that those who assaulted the Capitol on Wednesday could be charged with are pretty wide ranging: go to 13:08 for example...
Although I have a strong and instinctive dislike for these people and everything they stand for, am I the only one uncomfortable with the idea of throwing the book at them while far more complicit figures in the Trump administration and even Congress are left untouched? These people have been deliberately and cynically radicalised by powerful and malign forces. I would prefer to see a genuine deradicalisation effort undertaken than simply throwing a bunch of sad incels in jail. Plus Trump and his lackeys facing justice of course.
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
It's just a different mechanism and step one for the west is to extricate ourselves from the Chinese economy which means moving supply chains to other parts of the world.
I guess that is theoretically possible, but without draconian restrictions on business and an acceptance of huge increases in inflation for consumer goods it is difficult to imagine it really working. I personally think that while the Chinese regime definitely stinks, the West should simply bide it's time. Eventually their form of capitalism, highly corrupt though it is, will drive political change. Let us not forget that our very imperfect system of democracy has evolved that way largely gradually over the last 150 years. It is underpinned by a system of law that the Chinese are a long way off. That said, we still have a long way to go!
Legally enforce standards for companies outsourcing - if your phone is made with slave labour, you get fined.
Think of it as a Morality Tax, to go with Carbon Taxes.
Yes I think that is sensible. The issue is, however, that China will pretty soon move out of the "slave labour" phase. I put it in quotation marks because I don't know specific examples although I'm sure there are many. It will move to the next phase where Chinese workers all have some kind of economic power.
So saying this anti-Slave Labour measure will protect us is a bit Maginot Line-ish.
I'm sorry, TOPPING, normally you and I see most things outside of the EU from a similar perspective but I can't see what makes you so confident on this idea that China will move away from labour camps and re-education through hard labour for political dissidents and other individuals deemed to be undesirable or have low "social credit".
I've been to China a lot, in 2008/9 I was hopeful and had this outlook. Today I'm not, I don't see a route to that while Xi has his foot on the accelerator pushing the one China policy and aggressive expansion of Chinese land and sea territory at the expense of local neighbours, HK and soon Taiwan. China relies on having labour camps for dissidents more than it ever has, it's the constant threat against falling out of line with national policy and they are needed to keep the population of 1.6bn in line with oppressive policies.
China is a threat to us, our allies, it's neighbours and its own citizens that decide they don't want to live with a CCP boot on their neck.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
Boris is of course so liberal he has ended free movement to and from the EU
While liberalising movement with the rest of the world, which has got less attention.
Liberalising movement with the rest of the world and not discriminating in favour of predominantly white Europeans only is the right thing to do. It isn't what eg Farage would have done, or May.
He hasn't, all that has changed is EU migrants will now face the same immigration rules as rest of the world migrants.
Boris has introduced one of the biggest restrictions on immigration to the UK of any PM in UK history, Cameron may be a liberal, Boris is not
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
I cant agree with that - we could change in every way but others may still not be receptive. Holding out an olive branch when the other chap is holding a sword may work, but not always - so changing ourselves is not all it takes.
BBC - EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen says the EU has agreed to buy an extra 300 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, doubling the amount of that vaccine available to EU citizens.
...when though?
The additional doses will be delivered starting in the second quarter of 2021,” the EU said.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It is easier to exert negative influence (ie veto) than positive influence (ie a financial services agreeement) inside the EU.
The EU is not the be-all and end-all of course. However, if Britain wishes to regain a measure of influence with European peers it now has to pay for it via defence budget. It has surrendered a key lever of soft power.
Which is why the EU is a flawed and sclerotic institution. It has a one directional ratchet. Once something has passed, just once, it becomes almost impossible to reverse it.
Once again you show your ignorance of history. The EU evolved and changed direction often depending on who had most influence on events at the time. Paradoxically the EU that we left was very much a "liberal right" (your phrase which you claim describes yourself ) institution, hence why it was hated by those on the hard left. It favoured big business (not necessarily a good thing) and free trade within a framework of the single market, the latter which was very much a Thatcherite construct. But, hey why am I wasting my breath on someone that has such political understanding that he claims that Corbyn was the equivalent of Trump? lol!!
I see that in the Great British tradition of always needing an enemy to prove our greatness, having comprehensively defeated the EU we have now turned our attention to China. I expect France to reappear in due course; a bit more of a manageable foe than China.
Incidentally, for those who suggest that 'slave labour' in China is prevalent and a good reason for finding different suppliers, I assume they will apply the same principle to Bangladesh, for example, and a whole host of countries in South Asia and elsewhere in the world from which we buy cheap goods on the back of wages that do little to remove the factory workers from grinding poverty.
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
Boris is of course so liberal he has ended free movement to and from the EU
While liberalising movement with the rest of the world, which has got less attention.
Liberalising movement with the rest of the world and not discriminating in favour of predominantly white Europeans only is the right thing to do. It isn't what eg Farage would have done, or May.
Given that HYUFD said "to and from" rather than vice versa, I think he was talking about our free movement. I don't think Boris has made it any easier for us to move to the US or Australia, for example, but he's certainly made it substantially harder for us to move to EU countries.
Yes, I remember reading a research paper at the time suggesting that a ban on Australian coal imports would result in blackouts for China as it doesn't have enough domestic supply or supply chains from other countries available.
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
So you are saying at the margins we will export less to the EU. What you don't say is that at the margins they will export less to us, merely referring to the additional costs. There is no reason that there might be less choice but there will be an effect on prices (small). Given our £80bn deficit in goods with the EU why do you say that these marginal differences, which if equivalent will reduce our deficit and make domestic producers more competitive) is a "huge mistake"?
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
We hurt, the EU hurts, and the Chinese look on and smile. Well done, Brexiteers.
(Oh, that's almost a haiku )
No you miss the point again. The friction will be reduced to trivial levels, far lower than the friction there is in importing from or exporting to China, because it is in the EU's interests to make it so. Had we run a surplus with the EU then I suspect that their position would have been very different. Which rather makes the point about the irrationality of those who claim it is essential that we maintain this damaging relationship on exactly the same terms as have been damaging us for the last 20 years.
I would emphasise that most of the "fault", to the extent that is relevant at all, that membership of the SM has been so ruinous lies with this country.
We have run policies excessively focused on consumption because these are politically popular. We have not saved or invested enough to remain competitive. We are very bad at training those below the elite University level. We are very bad at converting the research done at elite University levels into new businesses. We take a very short term view of investment and have an excessively short term bonus culture. We don't train our managers very well. We have not worked hard enough on our infrastructure. We have not "played the game" of State aid at all well.
All bar the last of these is our fault, not the fault of the EU. Even the last is ultimately our fault. The EU have benefited from these failures and want to continue doing so. Why wouldn't they? The test of Brexit is whether we can start to address our own problems (and I fully acknowledge that EU membership did not in any way stop us from addressing these decades ago).
The key points in your post are at the bottom. *We* are to blame for prioritising consumption over production (which had also had the effect of delivering massive regional inequality). Not the EU.
Sadly I am not as confident as you that the EU will help to iron out these new frictions we are seeing. While rationally it may be in their interests to do so, I sense there is a general exhaustion with Brexit and also a belief that a price must be paid by the U.K.
I see that in the Great British tradition of always needing an enemy to prove our greatness, having comprehensively defeated the EU we have now turned our attention to China. I expect France to reappear in due course; a bit more of a manageable foe than China.
Incidentally, for those who suggest that 'slave labour' in China is prevalent and a good reason for finding different suppliers, I assume they will apply the same principle to Bangladesh, for example, and a whole host of countries in South Asia and elsewhere in the world from which we buy cheap goods on the back of wages that do little to remove the factory workers from grinding poverty.
That is one seriously weak dismissal of the specific level of concerns with China's regime as some kind of manifestation of exceptionalism.
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
So you are saying at the margins we will export less to the EU. What you don't say is that at the margins they will export less to us, merely referring to the additional costs. There is no reason that there might be less choice but there will be an effect on prices (small). Given our £80bn deficit in goods with the EU why do you say that these marginal differences, which if equivalent will reduce our deficit and make domestic producers more competitive) is a "huge mistake"?
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
Not the case unfortunately because the UK has no choice but to import stuff it can't easily produce itself from somewhere. It will only import from outside of the EU if those imports have an inherent cost benefit that more than compensates for the additional new cost of EU produce. Bear in mind Brexit is levelling up EU import costs to the same as the best elsewhere. It doesn't make the RoW cheaper. EU will still win on transport costs, being closer than anywhere else. Long story short there is limited scope for the UK to substitute EU imports for RoW imports or UK domestic production. It will continue to import from the EU at a higher cost to the consumer.
The EU will lose some of its previous trade to the UK (also because the UK will now be relatively poorer and can afford less). However it can repatriate supply chains from the UK to the EU and that will compensate to some extent. The UK is finding itself squeezed out of international supply chains.
There is nevertheless a risk for the EU. Which is that if the arrangement gets too one-sided, the UK will say, sod this and then the EU will lose its leverage. The EU wants leverage over the UK.
Of course we will continue to run a deficit to the EU. This will continue until we address the problems (and no doubt many others) I identified in my other contribution. At best that deficit will gradually fall. I accept UK plc does not benefit if we simply import the same goods at greater cost from elsewhere, indeed it disbenefits. We need to reduce our propensity to import but that requires much bigger and more important changes in our macroeconomic policies.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When we've developed an independent alternative. I've spoken against Trident here a lot.
Trident is useless. Literally, useless. I cannot conceive of a situation where the UK alone would use nuclear weapons to defend its interests where the US would not also act.
There are many, many situations we face around the globe where our nuclear weapons are of no deterrence value at all. Name me one terrorist group that gives a shit about what upgrade of nukes we currently have in place? What does terrify them is the idea of intervention by a state-of-the-art SAS, backed up by drones. A Trident missile can't spend months acting as a taxi driver in the hot-spots of the world.
Special Forces are a far, far better spend of the defence budget to my mind.
You obviously needed warming up this morning Mark. That was a brilliant post (in my opinion).
Unfortunately in recent days I have had a tendency to like conflicting posts so I'm now just waiting for the counter argument.
Thank you. I appreciate my position is very far from main-stream Conservative thinking. But I do sometimes like to show that I have an independent streak too....
Germany reports its highest 24-hour death toll so far – 1,188. There were 31,849 new infections, the Robert Koch Institute reports, but the actual figures may be higher still because of fewer tests done over Christmas
And people think that Kent COVID is still isolated to the UK? It's everywhere.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It is easier to exert negative influence (ie veto) than positive influence (ie a financial services agreeement) inside the EU.
The EU is not the be-all and end-all of course. However, if Britain wishes to regain a measure of influence with European peers it now has to pay for it via defence budget. It has surrendered a key lever of soft power.
Which is why the EU is a flawed and sclerotic institution. It has a one directional ratchet. Once something has passed, just once, it becomes almost impossible to reverse it.
It is hard to change the EU because it is a club of 28 (now 27). But - in Europe - it is the only club going.
We’ve now left the club so we’ve substituted reasonable influence (as a large member of the club), with very little.
Good.
We don't need to "influence" the club. We don't need to bind ourselves to a club.
We work well when we work with likeminded nations voluntarily, not through binding "clubs".
Our most important alliance is Five Eyes - which has nothing to do with the EU. Our second most important alliance is NATO - which again has nothing to do with the EU and not all EU nations are even members of.
The EU has never been that big of a deal quite frankly for international relations.
BBC - EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen says the EU has agreed to buy an extra 300 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, doubling the amount of that vaccine available to EU citizens.
...when though?
The additional doses will be delivered starting in the second quarter of 2021,” the EU said.
By which time, we will have stabbed most arms in the UK that want it. With (hopefully) some spectacular reductions in infection rates.
And the EU still with this new order still only got 80% of population covered. So unless they do more deals / more vaccines come online, they haven't got enough to cover everybody.
Although given hardly anybody in France wants it, I suppose it won't be a problem.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
You think Boris Johnson has sufficient political principles to be categorised?
I reckon "chancer" is the only category it would be safe to put him into.
Show me the successful politician who ISN'T an opportunist.
But equally there are many chancers who crash and burn before achieving their goals precisely because they are seen only as chancers. Josh Hawley will probably fall into that category.
I'd argue that successful politicians need to be something more than just chancers to succeed.
What both Trump and Boris have in common is the ability to enlist - whether based on fact or fantasy - new people to their cause, even if the cause is solely their own ego and not some societal good. This requires at very least charisma.
According to this (right-wing) lawyer the offences that those who assaulted the Capitol on Wednesday could be charged with are pretty wide ranging: go to 13:08 for example...
Although I have a strong and instinctive dislike for these people and everything they stand for, am I the only one uncomfortable with the idea of throwing the book at them while far more complicit figures in the Trump administration and even Congress are left untouched? These people have been deliberately and cynically radicalised by powerful and malign forces. I would prefer to see a genuine deradicalisation effort undertaken than simply throwing a bunch of sad incels in jail. Plus Trump and his lackeys facing justice of course.
Trump looks like he is in trouble for incitement if nothing else: that gets him half the jail time due to anyone who committed a crime on his direction. If they made the sentences consecutive it would add up to a very long time...
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
So you are saying at the margins we will export less to the EU. What you don't say is that at the margins they will export less to us, merely referring to the additional costs. There is no reason that there might be less choice but there will be an effect on prices (small). Given our £80bn deficit in goods with the EU why do you say that these marginal differences, which if equivalent will reduce our deficit and make domestic producers more competitive) is a "huge mistake"?
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
Not the case unfortunately because the UK has no choice but to import stuff it can't easily produce itself from somewhere. It will only import from outside of the EU if those imports have an inherent cost benefit that more than compensates for the additional new cost of EU produce. Bear in mind Brexit is levelling up EU import costs to the same as the best elsewhere. It doesn't make the RoW cheaper. EU will still win on transport costs, being closer than anywhere else. Long story short there is limited scope for the UK to substitute EU imports for RoW imports or UK domestic production. It will continue to import from the EU at a higher cost to the consumer.
The EU will lose some of its previous trade to the UK (also because the UK will now be relatively poorer and can afford less). However it can repatriate supply chains from the UK to the EU and that will compensate to some extent. The UK is finding itself squeezed out of international supply chains.
There is nevertheless a risk for the EU. Which is that if the arrangement gets too one-sided, the UK will say, sod this and then the EU will lose its leverage. The EU wants leverage over the UK.
I suspect, in the first week of January we should be wary of jumping to too many conclusions. There are certainly straws in the wind which suggest a poorer UK, and for myself I would welcome a return to the EU asap. However let's wait fort a few months and see. People will get used to the increased paperwork.It'll cost more, but it will get done.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
With respect, I sniff a bit of complacency here. The illiberal right have quite the grip on the narrative in this country right now, and have built a formidable beachhead within the Conservative Party. Boris Johnson, whose own position in this is shrouded in mixed signals, did a lot of damage to the liberal credentials of the Conservatives with his purge. And whatever the reasons and motivations, the idea that the Conservatives are now the party of Priti Patel but not Ken Clarke is something worthy of a moment's reflection.
I'm not saying it's over for you, far from it. You're right that it's doing "OK", as you put it. But I would say "only OK".
Ken Clarke was a dinosaur that was long overdue retirement. A great man in his day, but his day is long since over.
Liberal does not mean Europhile.
True but you do have to accept there are some worrying signs of illiberal thinking within the higher echelons of Government. Priti Patel and her views on capital punishment. The treatment of immigrants who had every right to be here over the last 10 years - stretching right back into Cameron's time as PM when he had that evil witch May as Home Secretary. Neither of these are anything to do with a position on Brexit but both are clear indications that there are some in Government, supported by Cameron and Boris in their time, who are a very long way from the sorts of liberalism you and I would generally espouse.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It is easier to exert negative influence (ie veto) than positive influence (ie a financial services agreeement) inside the EU.
The EU is not the be-all and end-all of course. However, if Britain wishes to regain a measure of influence with European peers it now has to pay for it via defence budget. It has surrendered a key lever of soft power.
Which is why the EU is a flawed and sclerotic institution. It has a one directional ratchet. Once something has passed, just once, it becomes almost impossible to reverse it.
It is hard to change the EU because it is a club of 28 (now 27). But - in Europe - it is the only club going.
We’ve now left the club so we’ve substituted reasonable influence (as a large member of the club), with very little.
Good.
We don't need to "influence" the club. We don't need to bind ourselves to a club.
We work well when we work with likeminded nations voluntarily, not through binding "clubs".
Our most important alliance is Five Eyes - which has nothing to do with the EU. Our second most important alliance is NATO - which again has nothing to do with the EU and not all EU nations are even members of.
The EU has never been that big of a deal quite frankly for international relations.
BBC - EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen says the EU has agreed to buy an extra 300 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, doubling the amount of that vaccine available to EU citizens.
...when though?
The additional doses will be delivered starting in the second quarter of 2021,” the EU said.
By which time, we will have stabbed most arms in the UK that want it. With (hopefully) some spectacular reductions in infection rates.
And the EU still with this new order still only got 80% of population covered. So unless they do more deals / more vaccines come online, they haven't got enough to cover everybody.
Although given hardly anybody in France wants it, I suppose it won't be a problem.
Given that time table then at some point it could be in our interest to gift the Republic some of our vaccine stock. Though probably not in the immediate future.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
Boris is of course so liberal he has ended free movement to and from the EU
While liberalising movement with the rest of the world, which has got less attention.
Liberalising movement with the rest of the world and not discriminating in favour of predominantly white Europeans only is the right thing to do. It isn't what eg Farage would have done, or May.
He hasn't, all that has changed is EU migrants will now face the same immigration rules as rest of the world migrants.
Boris has introduced one of the biggest restrictions on immigration to the UK of any PM in UK history, Cameron may be a liberal, Boris is not
Wrong.
"The new rules make it easier for non-EU migrants to get a working visa in the UK"
A lot of those protestors will now see how Trump has taken them for patsies.
One would hope so but the vox pops I've heard are disheartening. These people seem to be disconnected from reality. Often it makes me angry, or contemptuous, but when listening to some of them yesterday I had a flash of compassion. The phrase that popped into my mind, replacing the usual "racist scum" and "maximum morons", was "vulnerable adults".
Yes, there's quite a lot of perfectly humane people. They want to believe, need to believe.
And the saddest thing of all is that they are laying down their lives for it. The 4 in DC were drops in the ocean of the number of people killed due to Trumpdom.
Yes, I remember reading a research paper at the time suggesting that a ban on Australian coal imports would result in blackouts for China as it doesn't have enough domestic supply or supply chains from other countries available.
China banning australian coal should speed up conversion to renewable energy sources. A win for everybody in the world.
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
So you are saying at the margins we will export less to the EU. What you don't say is that at the margins they will export less to us, merely referring to the additional costs. There is no reason that there might be less choice but there will be an effect on prices (small). Given our £80bn deficit in goods with the EU why do you say that these marginal differences, which if equivalent will reduce our deficit and make domestic producers more competitive) is a "huge mistake"?
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
We hurt, the EU hurts, and the Chinese look on and smile. Well done, Brexiteers.
(Oh, that's almost a haiku )
No you miss the point again. The friction will be reduced to trivial levels, far lower than the friction there is in importing from or exporting to China, because it is in the EU's interests to make it so. Had we run a surplus with the EU then I suspect that their position would have been very different. Which rather makes the point about the irrationality of those who claim it is essential that we maintain this damaging relationship on exactly the same terms as have been damaging us for the last 20 years.
I would emphasise that most of the "fault", to the extent that is relevant at all, that membership of the SM has been so ruinous lies with this country.
We have run policies excessively focused on consumption because these are politically popular. We have not saved or invested enough to remain competitive. We are very bad at training those below the elite University level. We are very bad at converting the research done at elite University levels into new businesses. We take a very short term view of investment and have an excessively short term bonus culture. We don't train our managers very well. We have not worked hard enough on our infrastructure. We have not "played the game" of State aid at all well.
All bar the last of these is our fault, not the fault of the EU. Even the last is ultimately our fault. The EU have benefited from these failures and want to continue doing so. Why wouldn't they? The test of Brexit is whether we can start to address our own problems (and I fully acknowledge that EU membership did not in any way stop us from addressing these decades ago).
The key points in your post are at the bottom. *We* are to blame for prioritising consumption over production (which had also had the effect of delivering massive regional inequality). Not the EU.
Sadly I am not as confident as you that the EU will help to iron out these new frictions we are seeing. While rationally it may be in their interests to do so, I sense there is a general exhaustion with Brexit and also a belief that a price must be paid by the U.K.
It is not a given. We have to hold our politicians feet to the fire. There are fewer excuses now. The talk of us becoming a scientific superpower is vaguely hopeful but it cannot remain just talk.
Yes, I remember reading a research paper at the time suggesting that a ban on Australian coal imports would result in blackouts for China as it doesn't have enough domestic supply or supply chains from other countries available.
China banning australian coal should speed up conversion to renewable energy sources. A win for everybody in the world.
Not really, it just means they will use their own and NK coal which is dirtier and more polluting.
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
So you are saying at the margins we will export less to the EU. What you don't say is that at the margins they will export less to us, merely referring to the additional costs. There is no reason that there might be less choice but there will be an effect on prices (small). Given our £80bn deficit in goods with the EU why do you say that these marginal differences, which if equivalent will reduce our deficit and make domestic producers more competitive) is a "huge mistake"?
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
Not the case unfortunately because the UK has no choice but to import stuff it can't easily produce itself from somewhere. It will only import from outside of the EU if those imports have an inherent cost benefit that more than compensates for the additional new cost of EU produce. Bear in mind Brexit is levelling up EU import costs to the same as the best elsewhere. It doesn't make the RoW cheaper. EU will still win on transport costs, being closer than anywhere else. Long story short there is limited scope for the UK to substitute EU imports for RoW imports or UK domestic production. It will continue to import from the EU at a higher cost to the consumer.
The EU will lose some of its previous trade to the UK (also because the UK will now be relatively poorer and can afford less). However it can repatriate supply chains from the UK to the EU and that will compensate to some extent. The UK is finding itself squeezed out of international supply chains.
There is nevertheless a risk for the EU. Which is that if the arrangement gets too one-sided, the UK will say, sod this and then the EU will lose its leverage. The EU wants leverage over the UK.
Of course we will continue to run a deficit to the EU. This will continue until we address the problems (and no doubt many others) I identified in my other contribution. At best that deficit will gradually fall. I accept UK plc does not benefit if we simply import the same goods at greater cost from elsewhere, indeed it disbenefits. We need to reduce our propensity to import but that requires much bigger and more important changes in our macroeconomic policies.
That isn't generally how the world economy works these days. We are in the world of value-add. We take something that someone else has produced to a certain state, enhance it and pass it on. It is a system that depends on high levels of integration, low barriers to trade and common standards, all three of which Brexit puts into jeopardy for the UK.
I agree we need to find a way of living with the mess we have put ourselves into and try to make it better at some level.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It is easier to exert negative influence (ie veto) than positive influence (ie a financial services agreeement) inside the EU.
The EU is not the be-all and end-all of course. However, if Britain wishes to regain a measure of influence with European peers it now has to pay for it via defence budget. It has surrendered a key lever of soft power.
Which is why the EU is a flawed and sclerotic institution. It has a one directional ratchet. Once something has passed, just once, it becomes almost impossible to reverse it.
It is hard to change the EU because it is a club of 28 (now 27). But - in Europe - it is the only club going.
We’ve now left the club so we’ve substituted reasonable influence (as a large member of the club), with very little.
Good.
We don't need to "influence" the club. We don't need to bind ourselves to a club.
We work well when we work with likeminded nations voluntarily, not through binding "clubs".
Our most important alliance is Five Eyes - which has nothing to do with the EU. Our second most important alliance is NATO - which again has nothing to do with the EU and not all EU nations are even members of.
The EU has never been that big of a deal quite frankly for international relations.
The troll returns....
The Troll-Finder General returns. Sans arguments.....
A group of academics have criticised the decision to award an OBE to a prominent philosophy professor who advocates that women should not be made to share public toilets and changing rooms with transgender women.
Dr Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, opposed possible changes to the Gender Recognition Act which would have allowed people to be legally recognised as their chosen gender without the need for medical certification, and has described universities as becoming 'trans activist institutions'.
In an open letter, 600 of her peers from institutions including the LSE and MIT criticised the decision to recognise her services to education in the 2021 New Year Honours, saying they are 'dismayed' the British government chose to 'honour her for this harmful rhetoric'.
BBC - EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen says the EU has agreed to buy an extra 300 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, doubling the amount of that vaccine available to EU citizens.
...when though?
The additional doses will be delivered starting in the second quarter of 2021,” the EU said.
By which time, we will have stabbed most arms in the UK that want it. With (hopefully) some spectacular reductions in infection rates.
And the EU still with this new order still only got 80% of population covered. So unless they do more deals / more vaccines come online, they haven't got enough to cover everybody.
Although given hardly anybody in France wants it, I suppose it won't be a problem.
Vaccinations in Germany currently running at about 50,000 / day, though distributed very unevenly around the country.
Actually surprised and encouraged that rejoin is that high to be honest. This issue is far from resolved.
I have always thought that we will rejoin again in about 20/25 years. I was completely against the upheaval of Brexit, and still believe it to be damaging and pointless. Not sure I would vote to re join though unless there were significant upsides, and I am not sure the EU would necessarily want us back in the shorter term, so I probably would abstain. I would expect a fairly close alignment to the EU over the short and medium term and once we see a return of a Labour government, which I don't particularly want, a very close alignment. The whole thing has been a pointless charade. The Clown has a lot to answer for.
The only solution to the China problem is a slow removal of China from Western supply chains and isolating any country which allies with them with economic sanctions.
I've suggested a China Repression Tariff Escalator as a way of doing this gradually in a way that clearly links it to ongoing Chinese repression.
1% a year increase in tariff for each of these issues as long as they are unresolved: 1. End of "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong. 2. Mass imprisonment and re-education camps of the Uighur. 3. Occupation of Tibet. 4. Rule of Law / Free Speech within China. 5. Aggressive territorial expansionism: claims to South China Sea, Taiwan, etc.
So starting off at 5% increase each year. Should enable companies to move supply chains without suffering from a sudden shock.
Implemented by the UK unilaterally or with international agreement?
Possibly one as a prelude to the other, or with a small initial group of countries.
You could spend some time trying to get the D10 off the ground and acting together in it, but I'd act unilaterally if necessary.
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It is easier to exert negative influence (ie veto) than positive influence (ie a financial services agreeement) inside the EU.
The EU is not the be-all and end-all of course. However, if Britain wishes to regain a measure of influence with European peers it now has to pay for it via defence budget. It has surrendered a key lever of soft power.
Which is why the EU is a flawed and sclerotic institution. It has a one directional ratchet. Once something has passed, just once, it becomes almost impossible to reverse it.
It is hard to change the EU because it is a club of 28 (now 27). But - in Europe - it is the only club going.
We’ve now left the club so we’ve substituted reasonable influence (as a large member of the club), with very little.
Good.
We don't need to "influence" the club. We don't need to bind ourselves to a club.
We work well when we work with likeminded nations voluntarily, not through binding "clubs".
Our most important alliance is Five Eyes - which has nothing to do with the EU. Our second most important alliance is NATO - which again has nothing to do with the EU and not all EU nations are even members of.
The EU has never been that big of a deal quite frankly for international relations.
The troll returns....
The Troll-Finder General returns. Sans arguments.....
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
With respect, I sniff a bit of complacency here. The illiberal right have quite the grip on the narrative in this country right now, and have built a formidable beachhead within the Conservative Party. Boris Johnson, whose own position in this is shrouded in mixed signals, did a lot of damage to the liberal credentials of the Conservatives with his purge. And whatever the reasons and motivations, the idea that the Conservatives are now the party of Priti Patel but not Ken Clarke is something worthy of a moment's reflection.
I'm not saying it's over for you, far from it. You're right that it's doing "OK", as you put it. But I would say "only OK".
Ken Clarke was a dinosaur that was long overdue retirement. A great man in his day, but his day is long since over.
Liberal does not mean Europhile.
True but you do have to accept there are some worrying signs of illiberal thinking within the higher echelons of Government. Priti Patel and her views on capital punishment. The treatment of immigrants who had every right to be here over the last 10 years - stretching right back into Cameron's time as PM when he had that evil witch May as Home Secretary. Neither of these are anything to do with a position on Brexit but both are clear indications that there are some in Government, supported by Cameron and Boris in their time, who are a very long way from the sorts of liberalism you and I would generally espouse.
Oh I 100% agree with that, except that Priti Patel has for nearly a decade now renounced capital punishment and says she opposes it now.
The treatment of immigrants by May and prior Home Secretaries was an absolute disgrace. I wish the country was more liberal than it is - but I don't give up all hope even on Patel whom I view as a much better Home Secretary than Theresa May. People portray her as a cartoon authoritarian, but May was a genuine one.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When we've developed an independent alternative. I've spoken against Trident here a lot.
Trident is useless. Literally, useless. I cannot conceive of a situation where the UK alone would use nuclear weapons to defend its interests where the US would not also act.
There are many, many situations we face around the globe where our nuclear weapons are of no deterrence value at all. Name me one terrorist group that gives a shit about what upgrade of nukes we currently have in place? What does terrify them is the idea of intervention by a state-of-the-art SAS, backed up by drones. A Trident missile can't spend months acting as a taxi driver in the hot-spots of the world.
Special Forces are a far, far better spend of the defence budget to my mind.
You obviously needed warming up this morning Mark. That was a brilliant post (in my opinion).
Unfortunately in recent days I have had a tendency to like conflicting posts so I'm now just waiting for the counter argument.
Thank you. I appreciate my position is very far from main-stream Conservative thinking. But I do sometimes like to show that I have an independent streak too....
MM, over the last decade I have also come to the same conclusion. While being a nuclear state certainly gives the UK some heft in international relations, it is actually inconceivable that we would ever use them independently, or even outside of a major, bloc vs bloc, global war. So you have to look at their opportunity cost, and it is just too high.
More effort into expanding and improving equipment and training for elite forces, certainly. And much greater emphasis on the new, unmanned forms of defence, and their battlefield/intelligence integration.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
Boris is of course so liberal he has ended free movement to and from the EU
While liberalising movement with the rest of the world, which has got less attention.
Liberalising movement with the rest of the world and not discriminating in favour of predominantly white Europeans only is the right thing to do. It isn't what eg Farage would have done, or May.
He hasn't, all that has changed is EU migrants will now face the same immigration rules as rest of the world migrants.
Boris has introduced one of the biggest restrictions on immigration to the UK of any PM in UK history, Cameron may be a liberal, Boris is not
Wrong.
"The new rules make it easier for non-EU migrants to get a working visa in the UK"
No, non-EU migrants will still only really be able to get a working visa for skilled jobs, all that has happened is EU migrants without sufficient qualifications and an offer to do a job of sufficient skill will no longer be able to come here.
Whereas before EU migrants could come here to do any job regardless of skill level unlike non-EU migrants now neither EU migrants or non-EU migrants will be able to benefit from free movement to the UK to do any job regardless of skill level
Germany reports its highest 24-hour death toll so far – 1,188. There were 31,849 new infections, the Robert Koch Institute reports, but the actual figures may be higher still because of fewer tests done over Christmas
And people think that Kent COVID is still isolated to the UK? It's everywhere.
I don't think anyone thinks that Kent COVID is still isolated to the UK. However, I see that it is now accepted that Kent COVID did actually arise in Kent despite the earlier insistence of the British exceptionalists that it must have been imported from somewhere else and was merely first discovered in Kent!
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When we've developed an independent alternative. I've spoken against Trident here a lot.
Trident is useless. Literally, useless. I cannot conceive of a situation where the UK alone would use nuclear weapons to defend its interests where the US would not also act.
There are many, many situations we face around the globe where our nuclear weapons are of no deterrence value at all. Name me one terrorist group that gives a shit about what upgrade of nukes we currently have in place? What does terrify them is the idea of intervention by a state-of-the-art SAS, backed up by drones. A Trident missile can't spend months acting as a taxi driver in the hot-spots of the world.
Special Forces are a far, far better spend of the defence budget to my mind.
You need both, you can beat terrorists with special forces and drones, you cannot ward off Putin, Xi and Kim Jong Un just with them
But a nuclear NATO can.
And get real - when is the UK ever going to unilaterally go to nuclear war with Putin? Xi? Even Kim Jong Un? Our nukes did nothing to deter General Galtieri from grabbing the Falklands. They don't have anybody else quaking because they know we would never use them in a solo nuclear strike. There's no MAD about that - only UKAD.
On topic. Though statistically meaningless....I know three separate people who moved to China to work at various times over the last five years and all three love the place. They are bright enough and diverse enough for me to think that the country can't be all bad.
What's it's like for westerners and ordinary Chinese people are likely to be two different things.
Of course but by the same token it's not always easy to judge what goes on in a culture very different from our own and someone from our culture living there can sometimes be a better judge than 'international outrage'.
I remember being with some Bostonians in France during Thatcher's time and being told how barbaric and undemocratic we the British were because of our behaviour towards the Catholics in Northern Ireland. They were describing actions and a country I didn't recognise
Ah yes. I can also recall white, leftly people telling me that "Western democracy" wasn't suitable for Africans.
Apparently traditional African culture *required* corrupt dictators who claimed to be Marxist-Leninist, while buying yet another palace and stashing all the countries money in Switzerland.
If by "Western democracy" you mean the apartheid regime in South Africa and the Smith regime in Rhodesia, no it wasn't suitable for Africans. There again, in most cases neither was what came next.
The interesting bit was that South Africa "was different" according to the same people. One person One vote *was* a moral issue there.
But demanding democracy in Ghana was racist, apparently.
Similar attitudes to towards calls for multi party democracy in Eastern Europe.
The suddenly in 1989 a bunch of people discovered that democracy was a universal thing....
Who are these fictitious people who you quote from your seemingly fertile imagination? Sources and links please.
I read all about them in definitive works by Freddie Forsythe.
I can quite clearly recall Labour MPs on television, solemnly explaining that Western Democracy wasn't suitable for other countries. Apparently Soviet style communism was better than democracy since it guaranteed housing and jobs....
Why do you think New Labour happened? Who was Kinnock and then Blair fighting against?
This seems a strange battle to be stirring up today, lacking an obvious purpose? The topic is the (possible) threat from Chinese communism and the story of the day is the threat from right wing American extremism.
Perhaps you missed the mass arrests of pro-democracy activists in HK the day before yesterday. That is why I wrote this. To make sure that what China is doing isn't overlooked while we all focus on Trump.
On 27 January it is Holocaust Memorial Day. Leaders will solemnly say "Never Again". And ignore what a big fat lie it is because it is happening in China right now. To the Uighurs. While we look the other way.
How are those IT problems at French customs being resolved, eh Faisal?
They aren't. The French had backed off trying to fully impose the new border restrictions due to the chaos. They have said that leniency ends today.
Step beyond the inevitable set up chaos and look into the detail. Lets assume for a minute a world where enough vets have been hired to issue certificates, enough customs agents hired to create the paperwork, the new computer system has been switched on and works, and there's enough customs officials hired to process the paperwork.
That is then the system that we have created working. The problem being that for importers and exporters it doesn't work. The time, expense and complexity makes it simpler to not bother, to buy stuff from elsewhere.
Indeed. At the margins (which are quite wide), UK exporters will stop trading into the EU because it's a highly efficient market that won't absorb the inefficiencies of dealing with a Brexited UK, with consequences for people's jobs and prosperity. At the same time, the additional costs of imports will be passed onto consumers in form of higher prices and there will be less choice too.
Brexit is a huge mistake for Britain at many levels, but it is a mistake we will all have to live with. No-one is going to remediate it.
So you are saying at the margins we will export less to the EU. What you don't say is that at the margins they will export less to us, merely referring to the additional costs. There is no reason that there might be less choice but there will be an effect on prices (small). Given our £80bn deficit in goods with the EU why do you say that these marginal differences, which if equivalent will reduce our deficit and make domestic producers more competitive) is a "huge mistake"?
At the end of the day inefficiencies in our trade with the EU will hurt the EU more than us (even if the pain is dissipated over a larger area). This is why the EU ultimately signed a deal with us involving no quotas and no tariffs. It was in their own interests to do so. Similarly, it is in their interests to minimise any additional friction in trade because it is not to their advantage. I am sure that they will look to do so. Whether that is in our interests rather depends on what is agreed in respect of services in the next 3 months.
Not the case unfortunately because the UK has no choice but to import stuff it can't easily produce itself from somewhere. It will only import from outside of the EU if those imports have an inherent cost benefit that more than compensates for the additional new cost of EU produce. Bear in mind Brexit is levelling up EU import costs to the same as the best elsewhere. It doesn't make the RoW cheaper. EU will still win on transport costs, being closer than anywhere else. Long story short there is limited scope for the UK to substitute EU imports for RoW imports or UK domestic production. It will continue to import from the EU at a higher cost to the consumer.
The EU will lose some of its previous trade to the UK (also because the UK will now be relatively poorer and can afford less). However it can repatriate supply chains from the UK to the EU and that will compensate to some extent. The UK is finding itself squeezed out of international supply chains.
There is nevertheless a risk for the EU. Which is that if the arrangement gets too one-sided, the UK will say, sod this and then the EU will lose its leverage. The EU wants leverage over the UK.
I suspect, in the first week of January we should be wary of jumping to too many conclusions. There are certainly straws in the wind which suggest a poorer UK, and for myself I would welcome a return to the EU asap. However let's wait fort a few months and see. People will get used to the increased paperwork.It'll cost more, but it will get done.
I have always seen the UK's Brexit destiny as Vassal State to the EU (loaded term, I know...) . But the EU needs to make a good enough offer to the UK that it is content to be a vassal. The EU got its number one objective in December: the UK agreed a deal on essentially its terms.
I see that in the Great British tradition of always needing an enemy to prove our greatness, having comprehensively defeated the EU we have now turned our attention to China. I expect France to reappear in due course; a bit more of a manageable foe than China.
Incidentally, for those who suggest that 'slave labour' in China is prevalent and a good reason for finding different suppliers, I assume they will apply the same principle to Bangladesh, for example, and a whole host of countries in South Asia and elsewhere in the world from which we buy cheap goods on the back of wages that do little to remove the factory workers from grinding poverty.
The difference is that, in Bangladesh, the workers have more opportunity to protest and campaign for change than they do in China.
I think that's enough of a difference to draw a distinction.
Germany reports its highest 24-hour death toll so far – 1,188. There were 31,849 new infections, the Robert Koch Institute reports, but the actual figures may be higher still because of fewer tests done over Christmas
And people think that Kent COVID is still isolated to the UK? It's everywhere.
I don't think anyone thinks that Kent COVID is still isolated to the UK. However, I see that it is now accepted that Kent COVID did actually arise in Kent despite the earlier insistence of the British exceptionalists that it must have been imported from somewhere else and was merely first discovered in Kent!
As always you've got your finger on the button there.
Yes, I remember reading a research paper at the time suggesting that a ban on Australian coal imports would result in blackouts for China as it doesn't have enough domestic supply or supply chains from other countries available.
China banning australian coal should speed up conversion to renewable energy sources. A win for everybody in the world.
No they are just getting their coal from elsewhere. Meanwhile they are continuing to build more and more coal fired power stations. The idea that banning Australian coal has anything to do with cutting back on the use of coal is simply wrong. China produces more coal than the next 9 largest producers combined. Including Australia.
We know the Pfizer vaccine is apparently good against SA and Cockney COVID. One big danger for UK is if we find that AZN / Oxford one isn't, or at vastly reduced levels of protection. EU strategy of buying 100ms of more doses of Pfizer will look genius then.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
Boris is of course so liberal he has ended free movement to and from the EU
While liberalising movement with the rest of the world, which has got less attention.
Liberalising movement with the rest of the world and not discriminating in favour of predominantly white Europeans only is the right thing to do. It isn't what eg Farage would have done, or May.
He hasn't, all that has changed is EU migrants will now face the same immigration rules as rest of the world migrants.
Boris has introduced one of the biggest restrictions on immigration to the UK of any PM in UK history, Cameron may be a liberal, Boris is not
Wrong.
"The new rules make it easier for non-EU migrants to get a working visa in the UK"
No, non-EU migrants will still only really be able to get a working visa for skilled jobs, all that has happened is EU migrants without sufficient qualifications and an offer to do a job of sufficient skill will no longer be able to come here.
Whereas before EU migrants could come here to do any job regardless of skill level unlike non-EU migrants now neither EU migrants or non-EU migrants will be able to benefit from free movement to the UK to do any job regardless of skill level
Guess what? We will still have as many migrants, just more will be from outside the EU. How pointless was that? The UK government has been able to fully control 50% of migration whilst inside EU. They did nothing. The whole migrant debate was another crock of shit to gull the gullible. Oh, sorry did I mention you again @Philip_Thompson ?
A thoroughly depressing header. Hard to see a change in approach to meaningfully go against that odious regime happening in my lifetime.
Has anyone any glimmers of hope that the regime is not as strong as it appears?
Dark dreams everyone.
Sorry about that.
What is even worse is that evil regimes like China, Iran, Russia etc will take comfort from what has been happening in Washington.
I wish I could bring you good news.
That's a powerful indictment, Cyclefree. I think that a declining population of working age will ultimately bring China's economic miracle to a halt, and generate all sorts of internal pressures. Of course, the regime may became even more aggressive as a result.
Yes.
And with a leader other than Xi, I think China would have mellowed into middle age: it would have consumed of more what it produced, it would have got fat and rich and comfortable and keen to avoid changes that might inconvenience it. It would probably have edged slowly and surely towards something that looked like a democracy.
It would, simply, have become a bigger Japan or Singapore or Taiwan.
But instead it has Xi, a man with China's national destiny on his mind. And if growth stumbles, he'll look for external enemies to shore up his regime.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that simple.
Yes, sure, nasty leaders can make or break a country - Mao, Stalin etc. - but it's the system that's rotten. Our foreign policy should first be focussed on getting rid of Xi, and then gentle reforms in "openness" in the hope this then bears democratic fruit in the long-term.
Jung Chang has written convincingly on how the idea democracy doesn't 'suit' China or the Chinese to be total nonsense, as of course we all know it to be, citing the period in the early 1920s, when it was starting to flower, before the warlords, nationalists and then communists got their hands on it.
That made me laugh out loud! "Our foreign policy should should be focussed on getting rid of Xi"
It's tempting to quote the Godfather "The Corleone's don't have that kind of muscle no more'" but that would be an understatement. I know you're a Brexiteer and England now assumes its rightful place at the top of the pile but in all seriousness how do you expect Dominic Raab and his Merry Men get rid of the Chinese leader?
The UK cannot do it alone, no, but we do set our own foreign policy just like Australia and Canada does. If the West acts in concert, with India and the south-east Asian countries, we can do this.
We really can't. We might be able to contain China, but the idea that we can change who leads it is sheer fantasy. And counterproductive fantasy too.
Agree with this. Our job is to contain China not go for regime change. We're in a cold war with them and yet they're the only side who is fighting it. We've got smart people on here saying we don't need to. Mental.
We do need to. We won't.
So we should take the steps we can do. Containing China isn't in the question yet, nor is regime change. But what we can do is work with Australia and Canada and start to build the foundations for future western co-operation. What we can do is block China from investing in Hinckley C (which should be scrapped for other reasons but that's another story) or HS2 or anything else they want to invest in as well as 5G.
Baby steps. The Cold War took half a century, this could take as long or longer.
The Cold War is a totally inappropriate and ludicrous analogy. We were not intertwined in trade and technology with the Soviet Union, and both sides viewed each other with genuine military hostility. China, as other posters have commented, does not appear to have ideological or territorial ambition that threatens the West. Are they a sinister regime? Definitely. But similar to the Cold War? No.
It's just a different mechanism and step one for the west is to extricate ourselves from the Chinese economy which means moving supply chains to other parts of the world.
I guess that is theoretically possible, but without draconian restrictions on business and an acceptance of huge increases in inflation for consumer goods it is difficult to imagine it really working. I personally think that while the Chinese regime definitely stinks, the West should simply bide it's time. Eventually their form of capitalism, highly corrupt though it is, will drive political change. Let us not forget that our very imperfect system of democracy has evolved that way largely gradually over the last 150 years. It is underpinned by a system of law that the Chinese are a long way off. That said, we still have a long way to go!
Legally enforce standards for companies outsourcing - if your phone is made with slave labour, you get fined.
Think of it as a Morality Tax, to go with Carbon Taxes.
Yes I think that is sensible. The issue is, however, that China will pretty soon move out of the "slave labour" phase. I put it in quotation marks because I don't know specific examples although I'm sure there are many. It will move to the next phase where Chinese workers all have some kind of economic power.
So saying this anti-Slave Labour measure will protect us is a bit Maginot Line-ish.
Similarly with IP. Look at research published in any sector - biotechnology; materials science; physics - the sheer volume from China (of varying, but steadily improving quality) is notable.
There are things where they lag significantly - high end semiconductors and aero engines for example - but some of those are vulnerable (if Taiwan were lost, we'd be up shit creek for semiconductor manufacturing).
We know the Pfizer vaccine is apparently good against SA and Cockney COVID. One big danger for UK is if we find that AZN / Oxford one isn't, or at vastly reduced levels of protection. EU strategy of buying 100ms of more doses of Pfizer will look genius then.
I see that 2021, where 2020 was pb's year of the Trump apologists, is going to be the year of the CCP apologists.
I think my biggest concern is that the Western hard-Left dismiss it on the grounds of being 'cloaked' racism, claiming it's 'their' culture etc, and then do a bit of 'whataboutery' on the British Empire and USA on top. Perhaps they'll add in that whatever the CCP do it can't be as bad as that, on top.
They will wake up eventually, of course. And China know this. But, they hope to foster enough political division internally within Western countries in the meantime so that by the time they do it's too late.
In an ideal world, what is your vision for what China is, and how it should behave?
This isn't hard. A democratic country like the USA, Japan or India, would do.
That's it.
The USA has military bases all over Britain, and we cannot operate our defences, our financial systems, etc., without their active cooperation. Are you saying you would be happy for that to be the case with China, provided the Communist regime is removed?
.
Ahem - Hinkley C nuclear plant? With no Communist regime removed...
Quite, but I am asking if you're happy with that situation provided no commies.
Personally I would envision a situation where Britain is friends with all nations, but not overly dependent on any. For that to happen, it's us that needs to change, not other countries.
When should we scrap Trident?
When we've developed an independent alternative. I've spoken against Trident here a lot.
Trident is useless. Literally, useless. I cannot conceive of a situation where the UK alone would use nuclear weapons to defend its interests where the US would not also act.
There are many, many situations we face around the globe where our nuclear weapons are of no deterrence value at all. Name me one terrorist group that gives a shit about what upgrade of nukes we currently have in place? What does terrify them is the idea of intervention by a state-of-the-art SAS, backed up by drones. A Trident missile can't spend months acting as a taxi driver in the hot-spots of the world.
Special Forces are a far, far better spend of the defence budget to my mind.
You need both, you can beat terrorists with special forces and drones, you cannot ward off Putin, Xi and Kim Jong Un just with them
But a nuclear NATO can.
And get real - when is the UK ever going to unilaterally go to nuclear war with Putin? Xi? Even Kim Jong Un? Our nukes did nothing to deter General Galtieri from grabbing the Falklands. They don't have anybody else quaking because they know we would never use them in a solo nuclear strike. There's no MAD about that - only UKAD.
Putin, Xi and Jong UN or anyone even more authoritarian and nationalist than them who replaced them know that we, France and the US and India are the only western nations with our own nuclear weapons.
We know the Pfizer vaccine is apparently good against SA and Cockney COVID. One big danger for UK is if we find that AZN / Oxford one isn't, or at vastly reduced levels of protection. EU strategy of buying 100ms of more doses of Pfizer will look genius then.
On topic. Though statistically meaningless....I know three separate people who moved to China to work at various times over the last five years and all three love the place. They are bright enough and diverse enough for me to think that the country can't be all bad.
What's it's like for westerners and ordinary Chinese people are likely to be two different things.
Of course but by the same token it's not always easy to judge what goes on in a culture very different from our own and someone from our culture living there can sometimes be a better judge than 'international outrage'.
I remember being with some Bostonians in France during Thatcher's time and being told how barbaric and undemocratic we the British were because of our behaviour towards the Catholics in Northern Ireland. They were describing actions and a country I didn't recognise
Ah yes. I can also recall white, leftly people telling me that "Western democracy" wasn't suitable for Africans.
Apparently traditional African culture *required* corrupt dictators who claimed to be Marxist-Leninist, while buying yet another palace and stashing all the countries money in Switzerland.
If by "Western democracy" you mean the apartheid regime in South Africa and the Smith regime in Rhodesia, no it wasn't suitable for Africans. There again, in most cases neither was what came next.
The interesting bit was that South Africa "was different" according to the same people. One person One vote *was* a moral issue there.
But demanding democracy in Ghana was racist, apparently.
Similar attitudes to towards calls for multi party democracy in Eastern Europe.
The suddenly in 1989 a bunch of people discovered that democracy was a universal thing....
Who are these fictitious people who you quote from your seemingly fertile imagination? Sources and links please.
I read all about them in definitive works by Freddie Forsythe.
I can quite clearly recall Labour MPs on television, solemnly explaining that Western Democracy wasn't suitable for other countries. Apparently Soviet style communism was better than democracy since it guaranteed housing and jobs....
Why do you think New Labour happened? Who was Kinnock and then Blair fighting against?
This seems a strange battle to be stirring up today, lacking an obvious purpose? The topic is the (possible) threat from Chinese communism and the story of the day is the threat from right wing American extremism.
Perhaps you missed the mass arrests of pro-democracy activists in HK the day before yesterday. That is why I wrote this. To make sure that what China is doing isn't overlooked while we all focus on Trump.
On 27 January it is Holocaust Memorial Day. Leaders will solemnly say "Never Again". And ignore what a big fat lie it is because it is happening in China right now. To the Uighurs. While we look the other way.
I guess if we were still in the European Union, we would be part of the sweetheart deal the bloc has just done with China, whether we liked it or not.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
Boris is of course so liberal he has ended free movement to and from the EU
While liberalising movement with the rest of the world, which has got less attention.
Liberalising movement with the rest of the world and not discriminating in favour of predominantly white Europeans only is the right thing to do. It isn't what eg Farage would have done, or May.
He hasn't, all that has changed is EU migrants will now face the same immigration rules as rest of the world migrants.
Boris has introduced one of the biggest restrictions on immigration to the UK of any PM in UK history, Cameron may be a liberal, Boris is not
Wrong.
"The new rules make it easier for non-EU migrants to get a working visa in the UK"
No, non-EU migrants will still only really be able to get a working visa for skilled jobs, all that has happened is EU migrants without sufficient qualifications and an offer to do a job of sufficient skill will no longer be able to come here.
Whereas before EU migrants could come here to do any job regardless of skill level unlike non-EU migrants now neither EU migrants or non-EU migrants will be able to benefit from free movement to the UK to do any job regardless of skill level
Guess what? We will still have as many migrants, just more will be from outside the EU. How pointless was that? The UK government has been able to fully control 50% of migration whilst inside EU. They did nothing. The whole migrant debate was another crock of shit to gull the gullible. Oh, sorry did I mention you again @Philip_Thompson ?
The new migration rules will reduce unskilled immigration to the UK however
I see that in the Great British tradition of always needing an enemy to prove our greatness, having comprehensively defeated the EU we have now turned our attention to China. I expect France to reappear in due course; a bit more of a manageable foe than China.
Incidentally, for those who suggest that 'slave labour' in China is prevalent and a good reason for finding different suppliers, I assume they will apply the same principle to Bangladesh, for example, and a whole host of countries in South Asia and elsewhere in the world from which we buy cheap goods on the back of wages that do little to remove the factory workers from grinding poverty.
That is one seriously weak dismissal of the specific level of concerns with China's regime as some kind of manifestation of exceptionalism.
Risible.
Thanks. But why? I suspect that Chinese assemblers of I-phones have a better existence than many working in the sweatshops of the world making clothes for Primark - for example.
Have just been sent this. I have a decent Lego collection, would love this set to be launched
Scarily brilliant.
(If, thankfully, too many guns with the protestors...)
It's the way that the head wookie / shamanistic figure is set off at the front, looking at us and introducing it all as in a genuine advert, that's the piece de resistance.
I see that in the Great British tradition of always needing an enemy to prove our greatness, having comprehensively defeated the EU we have now turned our attention to China. I expect France to reappear in due course; a bit more of a manageable foe than China.
Incidentally, for those who suggest that 'slave labour' in China is prevalent and a good reason for finding different suppliers, I assume they will apply the same principle to Bangladesh, for example, and a whole host of countries in South Asia and elsewhere in the world from which we buy cheap goods on the back of wages that do little to remove the factory workers from grinding poverty.
That is one seriously weak dismissal of the specific level of concerns with China's regime as some kind of manifestation of exceptionalism.
Risible.
It's not risible if you see exceptionalism as one of the biggest single drivers both of our politics and commentary on our politics.
Germany reports its highest 24-hour death toll so far – 1,188. There were 31,849 new infections, the Robert Koch Institute reports, but the actual figures may be higher still because of fewer tests done over Christmas
And people think that Kent COVID is still isolated to the UK? It's everywhere.
I don't think anyone thinks that Kent COVID is still isolated to the UK. However, I see that it is now accepted that Kent COVID did actually arise in Kent despite the earlier insistence of the British exceptionalists that it must have been imported from somewhere else and was merely first discovered in Kent!
I don't totally see why there is such a big debate about this anyway.
The virus mutated in, it is presumed, someone with very advanced COVID. That could have happened anywhere in the world. It appears quite likely it happened in Kent or thereabouts. If it hadn't, then it could as easily have happened in Toronto, or Tallinn, or Timbuktu. The virus just doesn't care.
I see that in the Great British tradition of always needing an enemy to prove our greatness, having comprehensively defeated the EU we have now turned our attention to China. I expect France to reappear in due course; a bit more of a manageable foe than China.
Incidentally, for those who suggest that 'slave labour' in China is prevalent and a good reason for finding different suppliers, I assume they will apply the same principle to Bangladesh, for example, and a whole host of countries in South Asia and elsewhere in the world from which we buy cheap goods on the back of wages that do little to remove the factory workers from grinding poverty.
That is one seriously weak dismissal of the specific level of concerns with China's regime as some kind of manifestation of exceptionalism.
Risible.
Thanks. But why? I suspect that Chinese assemblers of I-phones have a better existence than many working in the sweatshops of the world making clothes for Primark - for example.
Germany reports its highest 24-hour death toll so far – 1,188. There were 31,849 new infections, the Robert Koch Institute reports, but the actual figures may be higher still because of fewer tests done over Christmas
And people think that Kent COVID is still isolated to the UK? It's everywhere.
I don't think anyone thinks that Kent COVID is still isolated to the UK. However, I see that it is now accepted that Kent COVID did actually arise in Kent despite the earlier insistence of the British exceptionalists that it must have been imported from somewhere else and was merely first discovered in Kent!
As always you've got your finger on the button there.
🙄
I was one of those who pointed out how ridiculous this claim was, given the pattern of spread of the new variant across the UK and its scattered appearance in other countries. But no, others insisted that it was merely discovered in the UK thanks to our superior sequencing abilities and must have originated elsewhere.
It is funny how these top London lawyers have so much difficulty in understanding the lockdown rules. Their antennae are ready to detect subtle breaches of equality regulation. She's been hot on the trail of antisemites in the Jolly Old Labour Party -- but a simple rule on lockdown like "Do Not Travel to Your Second Home" is completely beyond her ken.
"I would like to apologise to the local community, where we feel deeply embedded," said Mrs Hilsenrath.
So, basically the Llanegryn locals were the happy Stasis 😁😁😁& got Gog Plod to chase her out of Wales on Xmas day & leaked the story so it is all over the press.
And yet the little second-homer (probably third-homer) still believes the locals love her ("deeply embedded").
If you live in Hertfordshire and your children all go to school in Hertfordshire and you work in London, you are not deeply embedded in a small Welsh village
Still, it sounds as though she is in for the 100 per cent DomCum treatment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed. "She has apologised for this error of judgement," said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
Whoooo, "need to consider whether further action is needed".
Baroness Falkner is a LibDem, so I am sure she'll take a generous view of the perils of owning many homes.
And if not perhaps an appeal to the pb SecondHome Club (it is solidly LibDem) ?
Wales was a particularly odd place for someone from England to want to spend Christmas, when for us already here, Christmas had to be cancelled by the hapless Drakeford. Johnson, on the other hand had been in the enviable position of having timed his pre-Christmas precautions such, that Christmas in England was safely saved.
The reasons are I guess:
(i) Gwynedd (at the moment) has one of the lowest rate of infections in the country, whilst Hertfordshire is one of the highest.
(ii) London lawyers are irredeemably selfish, the most selfish people on the planet (always excepting London bankers & skiers😁).
Londoners with second homes occupy a unique place in the nation. They think they are loved ("deeply embedded in the village"). In fact, everyone loathes and hates them.
They are unpopular with the Left (for their privilege) and the Right (for their faux-liberalism). Hypocrisy clings to this constituency like a stink.
Still, I expect the darling will suffer no longterm problems, if a LibDem Baroness is in charge of looking into whether she did anything wrong.
I hope her Council Tax payments are up to date -- there is surcharge on second homes in Gwynedd, but it is up to second-homers to declare, so it is widely evaded.
It will be embarrassing if a new set of excuses have to be devised for the Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission if there is Council Tax underpayment from failing to self-declare the second home.
Small point of order: it's as common now on the right for people to object to genuine liberalism as it is for them to object to the faux version. The central political development of the past five years across the west has been the mainstreaming of illiberalism in the political right.
And a great number of those on the liberal right do not even realise they're in a struggle to the death over the soul of their ideology.
Cameron and Boris are both members of the liberal right which is why I support them both.
Theresa May was far more authoritarian, illiberal right which is why I opposed her.
Liberal right is doing OK in this country.
With respect, I sniff a bit of complacency here. The illiberal right have quite the grip on the narrative in this country right now, and have built a formidable beachhead within the Conservative Party. Boris Johnson, whose own position in this is shrouded in mixed signals, did a lot of damage to the liberal credentials of the Conservatives with his purge. And whatever the reasons and motivations, the idea that the Conservatives are now the party of Priti Patel but not Ken Clarke is something worthy of a moment's reflection.
I'm not saying it's over for you, far from it. You're right that it's doing "OK", as you put it. But I would say "only OK".
Ken Clarke was a dinosaur that was long overdue retirement. A great man in his day, but his day is long since over.
We could go back to developing an RAF nuclear capability. Gravity bombs (B61-Mod12 variants as an example) which we could drop from our F35s or Typhoons.
B61 not cleared for carriage on Typhoon and never likely to be.
What do we actually want from China? Do we want to remove the Communist regime and free the people? Because there seems to be no more than token dissent, and most of the population seems, rightly or wrongly, to be behind China's mission to achieve global pre-eminence, and its methods. Try to destroy China completely as a force and break it up into provinces? We can't really pretend that that would be a morally justifiable action. We need to decide what we want China to be, and what we want our interactions in the future to be like, before we can really put the policies in place to try and influence China toward this vision.
As the UK specifically, all I think we should do is be firm guardians of our technologies, try to keep skilled jobs in the UK wherever possible, be a friendly but straight talking competitor/partner, have a strong national defence policy, and be sure we can operate independently of every country when necessary. The Swiss way. It is not our job to try to stop the Chinese from becoming any richer or more powerful as an end in itself, and I don't believe it's possible anyway.
Good post.
The first thing, which some here (hiya @Casino ) are having trouble with, is accepting that China is the 600lb gorilla and a global titan only set to get stronger. Not a pleasant thought for those who go to bed in their Union Jack underpants but there is one mother of a country out there which, unlike the US, we didn't give birth to so we can't even patronise them.
Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1989 and ceased being a British colony we no longer even have a direct interest in what goes on there.
China is over the other side of the world, Russia is significantly closer to the UK and more of a direct concern to us.
In any case as China is a superpower and we are only a medium sized power now even if we wanted to take them on there is little we could do alone, the only nations who can seriously challenge and contain China now are the USA and India
Sorry, should have been 'Plus since Hong Kong became part of the PRC in 1997 and ceased being a British colony'
China signed an International Agreement with Patten. The hell we should ignore its terms less than halfway through its duration! There lies anarchy.
I'm not sure China has broken its international agreement with the UK. It explicitly made no commitment in the Joint Declaration to elections or liberal democracy and reserved the right to impose whatever political system it sees fit on Hong Kong. There is a question whether locking up political activists breached the commitment it did make for freedom of assembly, rather than as punishment for infringement of some specific law.
In other words, it is in breach of the spirit of the agreement rather than the letter. It is the letter that China will go on particularly when it is generally accused of failing to keep commitments that it explicitly did not make.
So it is a breach but genuinely "in a limited and specific" way
China is an unfriendly power who has spent the last several years infiltrating our financial, technology and political networks.
While much of this is just the “price” of globalisation, there had been a substantive shift in recent years as Xi has taken a more aggressive approach.
Our job in Britain is to actively protect ourselves against these threats, and to robustly defend democracy and the rule of law at home and in concert with likeminded allies.
We cannot change China. But we can - if confident in our own values - contain its influence on ourselves.
Brexit sadly limits our influence with our European peers - the recent EU-China agreement would not have been signed had we not left the EU. As @MaxPB says, it is likely the EU will now be a semi-unreliable ally on Chinese matters.
Honestly, if I remotely agreed with your penultimate sentence I'd have voted to Remain as well. As it was, we couldn't even leverage a proper deal on financial services into the EU/Canada trade agreement.
It is easier to exert negative influence (ie veto) than positive influence (ie a financial services agreeement) inside the EU.
The EU is not the be-all and end-all of course. However, if Britain wishes to regain a measure of influence with European peers it now has to pay for it via defence budget. It has surrendered a key lever of soft power.
Which is why the EU is a flawed and sclerotic institution. It has a one directional ratchet. Once something has passed, just once, it becomes almost impossible to reverse it.
It is hard to change the EU because it is a club of 28 (now 27). But - in Europe - it is the only club going.
We’ve now left the club so we’ve substituted reasonable influence (as a large member of the club), with very little.
Good.
We don't need to "influence" the club. We don't need to bind ourselves to a club.
We work well when we work with likeminded nations voluntarily, not through binding "clubs".
Our most important alliance is Five Eyes - which has nothing to do with the EU. Our second most important alliance is NATO - which again has nothing to do with the EU and not all EU nations are even members of.
The EU has never been that big of a deal quite frankly for international relations.
The EU is a “regulatory superpower”. It is not a hard power, but it contains several nations who are. Several EU nations border Russia.
To say it is “not a big deal” is not really true, is it.
According to this (right-wing) lawyer the offences that those who assaulted the Capitol on Wednesday could be charged with are pretty wide ranging: go to 13:08 for example...
Although I have a strong and instinctive dislike for these people and everything they stand for, am I the only one uncomfortable with the idea of throwing the book at them while far more complicit figures in the Trump administration and even Congress are left untouched? These people have been deliberately and cynically radicalised by powerful and malign forces. I would prefer to see a genuine deradicalisation effort undertaken than simply throwing a bunch of sad incels in jail. Plus Trump and his lackeys facing justice of course.
My hope/fantasy is the "protesters" are not jailed, or fined, but are "turned". People who have been conned are resistant to wising up - the very phrase means admitting they were fools - but once they do, hell hath no fury like.
Trump and Trumpdom has stripped these people of dignity. If they come to realize this the more robust of them will not just wean themselves off, they will develop a lifelong aversion to strongman fascist populism fueled by fear and hatred of the other. They will have the antibodies.
Comments
Now, about Brussels cosying up to Beijing....
- checks on outsourcing
- national security rules (5G) on ownership
- tariff equalisation
- promoting supply chain diversity (not necessarily UK) - tax breaks, points awarded in bidding for government contracts
- etc
There is nothing that will work over night. Nothing. It takes time Ito turn a ship - the best thing too do is to start to turn the wheel.
It is Pelosi that was more of a loose cannon.
It seems as though the best politician to have in charge dealing with the pandemic is Chicken Licken.
1% a year increase in tariff for each of these issues as long as they are unresolved:
1. End of "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong.
2. Mass imprisonment and re-education camps of the Uighur.
3. Occupation of Tibet.
4. Rule of Law / Free Speech within China.
5. Aggressive territorial expansionism: claims to South China Sea, Taiwan, etc.
So starting off at 5% increase each year. Should enable companies to move supply chains without suffering from a sudden shock.
Boris Johnson, whose own position in this is shrouded in mixed signals, did a lot of damage to the liberal credentials of the Conservatives with his purge. And whatever the reasons and motivations, the idea that the Conservatives are now the party of Priti Patel but not Ken Clarke is something worthy of a moment's reflection.
I'm not saying it's over for you, far from it. You're right that it's doing "OK", as you put it. But I would say "only OK".
The EU will lose some of its previous trade to the UK (also because the UK will now be relatively poorer and can afford less). However it can repatriate supply chains from the UK to the EU and that will compensate to some extent. The UK is finding itself squeezed out of international supply chains.
There is nevertheless a risk for the EU. Which is that if the arrangement gets too one-sided, the UK will say, sod this and then the EU will lose its leverage. The EU wants leverage over the UK.
I think he is an opportunist at times but instinctively he is a liberal Conservative, yes. Maybe I'm biased projecting what I believe onto him but any time a philosophy shines through it does seem to be liberal Conservativism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65t7gQtJqoY
We’ve now left the club so we’ve substituted reasonable influence (as a large member of the club), with very little.
Unfortunately in recent days I have had a tendency to like conflicting posts so I'm now just waiting for the counter argument.
A few tens of billions here, a few tens of billions there - and you are soon talking serious money.
And don't forget, on top of that are the costs to abandon nuclear facilities in this country.
"[The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority] publishes a range of estimates that could potentially be realistic. Based on the best data now available, different assumptions could produce figures somewhere between between £99 billion and £232 billion."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-provision-explaining-the-cost-of-cleaning-up-britains-nuclear-legacy/nuclear-provision-explaining-the-cost-of-cleaning-up-britains-nuclear-legacy#latest-estimate
Experience shows - always take the higher number. Effectively, nuclear subsidy plus abandonment is another Covid to pay for....
Liberalising movement with the rest of the world and not discriminating in favour of predominantly white Europeans only is the right thing to do. It isn't what eg Farage would have done, or May.
I would emphasise that most of the "fault", to the extent that is relevant at all, that membership of the SM has been so ruinous lies with this country.
We have run policies excessively focused on consumption because these are politically popular.
We have not saved or invested enough to remain competitive.
We are very bad at training those below the elite University level.
We are very bad at converting the research done at elite University levels into new businesses.
We take a very short term view of investment and have an excessively short term bonus culture.
We don't train our managers very well.
We have not worked hard enough on our infrastructure.
We have not "played the game" of State aid at all well.
All bar the last of these is our fault, not the fault of the EU. Even the last is ultimately our fault. The EU have benefited from these failures and want to continue doing so. Why wouldn't they? The test of Brexit is whether we can start to address our own problems (and I fully acknowledge that EU membership did not in any way stop us from addressing these decades ago).
That process is well underway in what’s left of the Tory Party, and unfortunately the membership do get to choose the next Leader.
This is the *not* the same party which chose Cameron.
Liberal does not mean Europhile.
I've been to China a lot, in 2008/9 I was hopeful and had this outlook. Today I'm not, I don't see a route to that while Xi has his foot on the accelerator pushing the one China policy and aggressive expansion of Chinese land and sea territory at the expense of local neighbours, HK and soon Taiwan. China relies on having labour camps for dissidents more than it ever has, it's the constant threat against falling out of line with national policy and they are needed to keep the population of 1.6bn in line with oppressive policies.
China is a threat to us, our allies, it's neighbours and its own citizens that decide they don't want to live with a CCP boot on their neck.
Boris has introduced one of the biggest restrictions on immigration to the UK of any PM in UK history, Cameron may be a liberal, Boris is not
By which time, we will have stabbed most arms in the UK that want it. With (hopefully) some spectacular reductions in infection rates.
https://www.hl.co.uk/news/2021/1/8/chinas-trade-attack-on-australia-is-producing-perverse-results
Incidentally, for those who suggest that 'slave labour' in China is prevalent and a good reason for finding different suppliers, I assume they will apply the same principle to Bangladesh, for example, and a whole host of countries in South Asia and elsewhere in the world from which we buy cheap goods on the back of wages that do little to remove the factory workers from grinding poverty.
*We* are to blame for prioritising consumption over production (which had also had the effect of delivering massive regional inequality). Not the EU.
Sadly I am not as confident as you that the EU will help to iron out these new frictions we are seeing. While rationally it may be in their interests to do so, I sense there is a general exhaustion with Brexit and also a belief that a price must be paid by the U.K.
Risible.
Students pledge rent strike over unused uni rooms
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-55576471
We don't need to "influence" the club. We don't need to bind ourselves to a club.
We work well when we work with likeminded nations voluntarily, not through binding "clubs".
Our most important alliance is Five Eyes - which has nothing to do with the EU.
Our second most important alliance is NATO - which again has nothing to do with the EU and not all EU nations are even members of.
The EU has never been that big of a deal quite frankly for international relations.
Although given hardly anybody in France wants it, I suppose it won't be a problem.
I'd argue that successful politicians need to be something more than just chancers to succeed.
What both Trump and Boris have in common is the ability to enlist - whether based on fact or fantasy - new people to their cause, even if the cause is solely their own ego and not some societal good. This requires at very least charisma.
"The new rules make it easier for non-EU migrants to get a working visa in the UK"
https://www.euractiv.com/section/uk-europe/news/uk-sets-out-steep-barriers-for-eu-migrants-from-2021/
I agree we need to find a way of living with the mess we have put ourselves into and try to make it better at some level.
Dr Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, opposed possible changes to the Gender Recognition Act which would have allowed people to be legally recognised as their chosen gender without the need for medical certification, and has described universities as becoming 'trans activist institutions'.
In an open letter, 600 of her peers from institutions including the LSE and MIT criticised the decision to recognise her services to education in the 2021 New Year Honours, saying they are 'dismayed' the British government chose to 'honour her for this harmful rhetoric'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9123083/Academics-slam-government-awarding-OBE-anti-trans-professor.html
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Daten/Impfquoten-Tab.html
You could spend some time trying to get the D10 off the ground and acting together in it, but I'd act unilaterally if necessary.
The treatment of immigrants by May and prior Home Secretaries was an absolute disgrace. I wish the country was more liberal than it is - but I don't give up all hope even on Patel whom I view as a much better Home Secretary than Theresa May. People portray her as a cartoon authoritarian, but May was a genuine one.
More effort into expanding and improving equipment and training for elite forces, certainly. And much greater emphasis on the new, unmanned forms of defence, and their battlefield/intelligence integration.
Whereas before EU migrants could come here to do any job regardless of skill level unlike non-EU migrants now neither EU migrants or non-EU migrants will be able to benefit from free movement to the UK to do any job regardless of skill level
And get real - when is the UK ever going to unilaterally go to nuclear war with Putin? Xi? Even Kim Jong Un? Our nukes did nothing to deter General Galtieri from grabbing the Falklands. They don't have anybody else quaking because they know we would never use them in a solo nuclear strike. There's no MAD about that - only UKAD.
On 27 January it is Holocaust Memorial Day. Leaders will solemnly say "Never Again". And ignore what a big fat lie it is because it is happening in China right now. To the Uighurs. While we look the other way.
I think that's enough of a difference to draw a distinction.
🙄
I see the MAGA's have smashed up some statues in Congress.
Can't fault their sense of irony.
Look at research published in any sector - biotechnology; materials science; physics - the sheer volume from China (of varying, but steadily improving quality) is notable.
There are things where they lag significantly - high end semiconductors and aero engines for example - but some of those are vulnerable (if Taiwan were lost, we'd be up shit creek for semiconductor manufacturing).
(If, thankfully, too many guns with the protestors...)
That remains a deterrent to them
The virus mutated in, it is presumed, someone with very advanced COVID. That could have happened anywhere in the world. It appears quite likely it happened in Kent or thereabouts. If it hadn't, then it could as easily have happened in Toronto, or Tallinn, or Timbuktu. The virus just doesn't care.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51697800
"According to the report, the factories claim to be part of the supply chain for 83 well-known global brands, including Nike, Apple and Dell."
It is not a hard power, but it contains several nations who are. Several EU nations border Russia.
To say it is “not a big deal” is not really true, is it.
Trump and Trumpdom has stripped these people of dignity. If they come to realize this the more robust of them will not just wean themselves off, they will develop a lifelong aversion to strongman fascist populism fueled by fear and hatred of the other. They will have the antibodies.