BREXIT. Undoing (some of) the damage. Part 2: From Principles to Policies – politicalbetting.com

Gardenwalker said:

Anabobazina said:

Gardenwalker said:

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.

I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.

You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.

Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.

Maybe. But he is constantly banging on about his amazing biz case and how stupid officials are for not appreciating it.

Then Nick Palmer comes on and says tidal had the highest unit costs of any energy choice.

rcs1000 said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

MaxPB said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

MaxPB said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/10/germany-offered-1bn-us-dropped-sanctions-against-controversial/

Unbelievable. How can we even think about having more than just a simple trading agreement with the EU.

I don't really understand why the Germans and Russians should not build this pipeline. The argument seems to be that it makes continental Europe 'dependent' on Russian gas. How does having a pipeline to get something cheaper remove the competing alternative suppliers? If Putin does 'switch the pipeline off' to blackmail the West, how does that actually work as blackmail when all the other suppliers are still there?

It allows Russia to bypass Eastern Europe and continue supplying gas to Western Europe. As it stands the only way to cut off Eastern Europe from gas also results in cutting off extremely profitable Western European markets simultaneously.

Essentially Germany is handing Russia a huge stick to bear Eastern Europe with should they decide they don't like Russian interference in their nations.

But it benefits German companies and allows Siemens to build cheaper dishwashers, so it's worth it from the German perspective.

Then the right way forward would appear to be to build alternative supply lines to those countries, rather than preventing Russia and Germany from pursuing what is on the face of it a legitimate commercial initiative. I know exactly what I would think as a British consumer if another country wanted to stop me getting cheaper power from another country - so I don't see why the Germans should feel any different.

How do you feel as a British consumer having to pay for baseload nuclear electricity at twice the price of domestic tidal? And it is the Whitehall civil servants stopping you getting that cheaper power....

I feel f-ing livid about it - I'm all in on tidal and if someone tells me who to write to that I can influence (seems unlikely as an Englishman living in Scotland), or points me to a petition I can sign, I'll do it.

I still have a feeling that this situation will turn around as Boris seeks a popular policy in Wales - very excited about it WHEN (not if) it happens.

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

There is no long term market price for electricity.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1359905122248241152?s=19

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.

I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.

You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.

Normally that is you.

I’d have you generally mid-table.

Not top, except when you lose your shit because someone questions your fondest but utterly demented belief set.

Surprised to hear you think EFTA membership, a good relationship with the EU, higher animal welfare and environmental standards and a globalist outlook are a 'demented belief set'.

Says a great deal about your particular value set.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1359905122248241152?s=19

maaarsh said:

Anabobazina said:

Gardenwalker said:

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.

I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.

You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.

Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.

Yep, both wind & solar are pretty useless on the days of the year with highest power requirement (high pressure in winter - freezing cold, no wind, sun too low to do much despite lack of clouds) - basically where we are today running all the gas stations full chat to fill the gap, and then next week the wind comes back and we'll pay them to not run whilst pretending wind is subsidy free.

MarqueeMark said:

Gardenwalker said:

Anabobazina said:

Gardenwalker said:

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.

I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.

You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.

Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.

Maybe. But he is constantly banging on about his amazing biz case and how stupid officials are for not appreciating it.

Then Nick Palmer comes on and says tidal had the highest unit costs of any energy choice.

Swansea is used as the benchmark. It is W-A-Y higher than all the other tidal lagoons - because it is the test-bed.

Back then, offshore wind was £150. So offshore wind costs come down by 2/3rds, but tidal apparently stays the same, based on the price of the testbed being the roll-out price across the whole series of lagoons. There, in a nutshell, is the civil service case that has been made to Govt.

However, if you have a "vaccine-style" task force, they would see just how ridiculous that positon is.

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.

I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Anabobazina said:

maaarsh said:

Anabobazina said:

Gardenwalker said:

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.

I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.

You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.

Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.

Yep, both wind & solar are pretty useless on the days of the year with highest power requirement (high pressure in winter - freezing cold, no wind, sun too low to do much despite lack of clouds) - basically where we are today running all the gas stations full chat to fill the gap, and then next week the wind comes back and we'll pay them to not run whilst pretending wind is subsidy free.

Solar is superb in hot countries like the (southern) US and India, where much of the energy demand is for aircon in the summer. So the sun shines exactly when you need it.

It's of less use in the UK where few homes have aircon, and it's only really hot for 2-3 weeks a year and even then largely only in the SE.

Endillion said:

TOPPING said:

Not quite Financial Services and I'm sure no one cares but Brexit bonus pt. 94.

For me with three horses on the ferry this would raise the charge, on top of the £200 ferry fare, by £1,070.76 (at today’s exchange rate) to £1,270.76. A 535% rise. On the train on top of the fare of £500 the rise would be £1,983.45 making a total of £2,483.45 which is a 396% rise. There is also the annual fee of E500 to European Horse Services to act as your agent in the EU and an annual Carnet charge of £800.

Suppose you have a wolf, a goat and a cabbage, instead of three horses?

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.

I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.

You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.

Normally that is you.

I’d have you generally mid-table.

Not top, except when you lose your shit because someone questions your fondest but utterly demented belief set.

Surprised to hear you think EFTA membership, a good relationship with the EU, higher animal welfare and environmental standards and a globalist outlook are a 'demented belief set'.

Says a great deal about your particular value set.

I was thinking more about your global warming denialism, belief in an entirely open doors immigration policy, and advocacy for Scottish independence...from Lincolnshire.

Hang on, are you Piers Corbyn?

kinabalu said:

BluestBlue said:

kinabalu said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Actually, I do know that, although I wish it were not so. It's done, we're out, thank fuck for that, what a palaver. NEXT. The only way this changes is if it's an absolute and obvious disaster that can be pinned on Brexit. I'm hoping for this and any trueblood Remainer who says they aren't is fibbing.

One can see how the absolute and obvious success of the UK vaccine programme - which is being pinned on Brexit by none other than the self-described EU 'tanker' itself! - might be distressing to you then.

That's a nice try.

No, I am pleased about our vaccine rollout. Unlike many Leavers, however, I am not getting a buzz from the EU's troubles in same. It has little, in truth, to do with Brexit, and much to do with 'necessity is the mother of invention', our necessity being particularly acute, viz our death toll and our healthcare system creaking under its Covid caseload. But, yes, a slight Brexit angle too. That's fair.

And to clarify on Brexit economic fallout. It will be negative, there is no way it won't be, it's almost laws of physics territory, so my hope is simply that it is clearly so - the better for Brexit pinning and hence future rectification. So, for example, we don't want the slow steady slide into relative penury over 50 years. That's no good to anybody. What we want are some quick "wins", the big factory closing, say, with an accompanying announcement the supply chain just doesn't hack it anymore.

The truth is, and I know this will get a chorus of boos but I can take it, I view the Leave vote as bad behaviour. And bad behaviour should not be rewarded. It should be punished.

CarlottaVance said:

https://twitter.com/BBCYaldaHakim/status/1359905060570996740?s=20

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.

I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.

You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.

Normally that is you.

I’d have you generally mid-table.

Not top, except when you lose your shit because someone questions your fondest but utterly demented belief set.

Surprised to hear you think EFTA membership, a good relationship with the EU, higher animal welfare and environmental standards and a globalist outlook are a 'demented belief set'.

Says a great deal about your particular value set.

I was thinking more about your global warming denialism, belief in an entirely open doors immigration policy, and advocacy for Scottish independence...from Lincolnshire.

Hang on, are you Piers Corbyn?

Anyone using the word 'denier' in this context has already lost the argument.

And advocating Scottish Independence from anywhere in England seems a very enlightened position to me. Of course with you being a statist verging on the fascist - or the communist if you prefer - I am not surprised you are opposed to people having the right of self determination. I am sure you were right there cheering on the Spanish as they were beating up old ladies for daring to want to have a vote.

CarlottaVance said:

https://twitter.com/BBCYaldaHakim/status/1359905060570996740?s=20

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Lol.

Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de

Anabobazina said:

maaarsh said:

Anabobazina said:

Gardenwalker said:

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.

I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.

You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.

Yet tidal is great to have in the mix for baseload. Wind power is intermittent.

Yep, both wind & solar are pretty useless on the days of the year with highest power requirement (high pressure in winter - freezing cold, no wind, sun too low to do much despite lack of clouds) - basically where we are today running all the gas stations full chat to fill the gap, and then next week the wind comes back and we'll pay them to not run whilst pretending wind is subsidy free.

Solar is superb in hot countries like the (southern) US and India, where much of the energy demand is for aircon in the summer. So the sun shines exactly when you need it.

It's of less use in the UK where few homes have aircon, and it's only really hot for 2-3 weeks a year and even then largely only in the SE.

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Lol.

Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de

As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

NickPalmer said:

Malmesbury said:

moonshine said:

I spoke to the tidal lagoon power lot about making an equity investment several years ago. One of the obvious problems to me was that even if the government signed off on the principle that a tidal lagoon power initiative was a great idea and even greenlit them to run the Swansea scheme, there was no guarantee that the company putting in the legwork for the proof of concept pilot would win the mandate for the larger economic schemes elsewhere.

It needs to be partially nationalised if it’s going to work. Taxpayer taking risk, in exchange for taxpayer getting reward. Not just electricity consumers (not quite the same thing). Old fashioned Tories in Parliament and Treasury mandarins don’t like hearing that sort of thing.

I don't follow on the risk vs reward - what is the price for power generated by the scheme vs the market price?

It's over a decade ago now but when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks) we looked at the unit costs of every variety of energy and tidal lagoons were by far the worst (measured in energy returned over 30 years per £, as I recall. The clear winner then was onshore windpower, though offshore did quite well toodespite the higher maintenance costs - both were even then competitive with gas and oil. Nuclear was significantly more expensive but of course available 24/7 - we tried to avoid plunging for that anyway, feeling that renewables were the safest long-term direction. A later review tweaked the decision more towards including nuclear in the long-term directionh.

I doubt if the maths have changed that dramatically, so doing the lagoon approach would need to be subsidised because of its other benefits.

You saying that Marquee Mark talks bollocks? What a surprise.

Normally that is you.

I’d have you generally mid-table.

Not top, except when you lose your shit because someone questions your fondest but utterly demented belief set.

Surprised to hear you think EFTA membership, a good relationship with the EU, higher animal welfare and environmental standards and a globalist outlook are a 'demented belief set'.

Says a great deal about your particular value set.

I was thinking more about your global warming denialism, belief in an entirely open doors immigration policy, and advocacy for Scottish independence...from Lincolnshire.

Hang on, are you Piers Corbyn?

Anyone using the word 'denier' in this context has already lost the argument.

And advocating Scottish Independence from anywhere in England seems a very enlightened position to me. Of course with you being a statist verging on the fascist - or the communist if you prefer - I am not surprised you are opposed to people having the right of self determination. I am sure you were right there cheering on the Spanish as they were beating up old ladies for daring to want to have a vote.

A lot of projection here. Almost a classic case.

CarlottaVance said:

Poll on "what to do with extra vaccines":

https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1359905043051290626?s=20

https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1359905050844397569?s=20

So that's Ireland and the EU out of it.....

Carnyx said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Carnyx said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

MarqueeMark said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

MaxPB said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

MaxPB said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/10/germany-offered-1bn-us-dropped-sanctions-against-controversial/

Unbelievable. How can we even think about having more than just a simple trading agreement with the EU.

I don't really understand why the Germans and Russians should not build this pipeline. The argument seems to be that it makes continental Europe 'dependent' on Russian gas. How does having a pipeline to get something cheaper remove the competing alternative suppliers? If Putin does 'switch the pipeline off' to blackmail the West, how does that actually work as blackmail when all the other suppliers are still there?

It allows Russia to bypass Eastern Europe and continue supplying gas to Western Europe. As it stands the only way to cut off Eastern Europe from gas also results in cutting off extremely profitable Western European markets simultaneously.

Essentially Germany is handing Russia a huge stick to bear Eastern Europe with should they decide they don't like Russian interference in their nations.

But it benefits German companies and allows Siemens to build cheaper dishwashers, so it's worth it from the German perspective.

Then the right way forward would appear to be to build alternative supply lines to those countries, rather than preventing Russia and Germany from pursuing what is on the face of it a legitimate commercial initiative. I know exactly what I would think as a British consumer if another country wanted to stop me getting cheaper power from another country - so I don't see why the Germans should feel any different.

How do you feel as a British consumer having to pay for baseload nuclear electricity at twice the price of domestic tidal? And it is the Whitehall civil servants stopping you getting that cheaper power....

I feel f-ing livid about it - I'm all in on tidal and if someone tells me who to write to that I can influence (seems unlikely as an Englishman living in Scotland), or points me to a petition I can sign, I'll do it.

I still have a feeling that this situation will turn around as Boris seeks a popular policy in Wales - very excited about it WHEN (not if) it happens.

https://www.energylivenews.com/2020/03/26/worlds-biggest-undersea-tidal-energy-hub-lands-1-5m-grant-from-scottish-government/

Might be of interest. And I entirely agree with you re tidal power.

Sounds like a very worthwhile scheme (for a very modest investment initially by the SG).

The SG is rather more interested in tidal than the UKG, is my impression - but I haven't been following it in detail.

FF43 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

It's in the UK's interest to have its cake and eat it, which is how Johnson put it. For powerful and specific reasons that is not at all in the EU's interest - mainly because as with all membership organisations they need to maximise the value of membership. Brexit was sold on no loss. The EU needs to make sure no other country tries that again by allowing that loss to happen. Having a good relationship with the UK is a nice to have, but is secondary. What's maybe interesting is that member states are completely aligned with the EU on that. They aren't the Commission and you might expect them to have different views.

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Lol.

Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de

As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.

Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.

That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.

Charles said:

kinabalu said:

Charles said:

Fysics_Teacher said:

Charles said:

MattW said:

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1359872586545561602

This is the problematic quote afaics:

Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children,” the report said quoting the post.

“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”

IMV hating someone is hating someone. It doesn't really matter why.

But on the left it is totemic that motive matters more than action. (cf the higher sentences for racist/sexuality motivated crimes in the UK vs generic crimes)

Mens Rea has been part of criminal law for a very long time I think. The motive makes the crime in many cases, not just those involving hate.

Yes, but I was thinking not of Mens Rea, but the fact that you have a higher sentence for beating up a black or gay person (as a hate crime) vs beating up someone because they just happen to be in the area.

For me it's the beating up that is the crime that needs punishing, not the "why".

So, take the Stephen Lawrence murder. For you the racist motivation adds not a jot to the weight of the crime?

No. A black man's life is worth the same as a white man's life (or a man, or woman, of any other colour).

A murder should be punished as such.

Of course, the parole board, in due course, will need to consider the probability of reoffending and might come to a different view at that time.

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Lol.

Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de

As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.

Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.

That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.

TOPPING said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Lol.

Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de

As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.

Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.

That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.

Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"

kinabalu said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

kinabalu said:

moonshine said:

kinabalu said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Actually, I do know that, although I wish it were not so. It's done, we're out, thank fuck for that, what a palaver. NEXT. The only way this changes is if it's an absolute and obvious disaster that can be pinned on Brexit. I'm hoping for this and any trueblood Remainer who says they aren't is fibbing.

What a strange way to live a life.

No different to Europhobes wanting the EU to struggle and ideally collapse.
I find agnostics more strange.

It is not the same, because reprehensible and stupid as those people are, they are not willing their own country, where they pay taxes, and bring up their families, to fail. They are merely selfish, not active self-harmers.

First, there is no moral superiority in wishing harm on foreigners rather than Brits. Second, none of the harm done by Brexit will be caused by people who opposed it. It's outrageous to suggest this. That's victim blaming. That's gaslighting. It's just a complete and utter bunch of bananas.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1359905122248241152?s=19

Charles said:

kinabalu said:

Charles said:

Fysics_Teacher said:

Charles said:

MattW said:

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1359872586545561602

This is the problematic quote afaics:

Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children,” the report said quoting the post.

“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”

IMV hating someone is hating someone. It doesn't really matter why.

But on the left it is totemic that motive matters more than action. (cf the higher sentences for racist/sexuality motivated crimes in the UK vs generic crimes)

Mens Rea has been part of criminal law for a very long time I think. The motive makes the crime in many cases, not just those involving hate.

Yes, but I was thinking not of Mens Rea, but the fact that you have a higher sentence for beating up a black or gay person (as a hate crime) vs beating up someone because they just happen to be in the area.

For me it's the beating up that is the crime that needs punishing, not the "why".

So, take the Stephen Lawrence murder. For you the racist motivation adds not a jot to the weight of the crime?

No. A black man's life is worth the same as a white man's life (or a man, or woman, of any other colour).

A murder should be punished as such.

Of course, the parole board, in due course, will need to consider the probability of reoffending and might come to a different view at that time.

CarlottaVance said:

https://twitter.com/PHE_uk/status/1359916078130991104?s=20

FF43 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

It's in the UK's interest to have its cake and eat it, which is how Johnson put it. For powerful and specific reasons that is not at all in the EU's interest - mainly because as with all membership organisations they need to maximise the value of membership. Brexit was sold on no loss. The EU needs to make sure no other country tries that again by allowing that loss to happen. Having a good relationship with the UK is a nice to have, but is secondary. What's maybe interesting is that member states are completely aligned with the EU on that. They aren't the Commission and you might expect them to have different views.

TOPPING said:

Charles said:

kinabalu said:

Charles said:

Fysics_Teacher said:

Charles said:

MattW said:

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1359872586545561602

This is the problematic quote afaics:

Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children,” the report said quoting the post.

“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”

IMV hating someone is hating someone. It doesn't really matter why.

But on the left it is totemic that motive matters more than action. (cf the higher sentences for racist/sexuality motivated crimes in the UK vs generic crimes)

Mens Rea has been part of criminal law for a very long time I think. The motive makes the crime in many cases, not just those involving hate.

Yes, but I was thinking not of Mens Rea, but the fact that you have a higher sentence for beating up a black or gay person (as a hate crime) vs beating up someone because they just happen to be in the area.

For me it's the beating up that is the crime that needs punishing, not the "why".

So, take the Stephen Lawrence murder. For you the racist motivation adds not a jot to the weight of the crime?

No. A black man's life is worth the same as a white man's life (or a man, or woman, of any other colour).

A murder should be punished as such.

Of course, the parole board, in due course, will need to consider the probability of reoffending and might come to a different view at that time.

So wife can't take it any more decides to electrocute her husband by dropping the toaster in his bath = person singling out man because he is Asian and beating him to death in front of a cheering racist mob.

Stocky said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Stocky said:

CarlottaVance said:

Poll on "what to do with extra vaccines":

https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1359905043051290626?s=20

https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1359905050844397569?s=20

So that's Ireland and the EU out of it.....

Why do pollsters still try to polarise the country into remain and leave by analysing their findings in this way? It`s becoming irritating.

Because alongside age and educational attainment level, how people voted in the referendum are pretty good predictors for how people will vote on a whole range of opinions.

Feels like they are deliberately rubbing salt into a wound to me.

Gardenwalker said:

TOPPING said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Lol.

Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de

As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.

Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.

That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.

Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"

Lol.

He is one of the many EU obsessed “self-righteous brothers” that infest this site.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EqPAuotjkM4

Oi! Barnier! NO!

Richard_Tyndall said:

TOPPING said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Lol.

Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de

As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.

Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.

That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.

Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"

Oh dear. Topping is off his medication again.

Gardenwalker said:

TOPPING said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Lol.

Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de

As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.

Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.

That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.

Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"

Lol.

He is one of the many EU obsessed “self-righteous brothers” that infest this site.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EqPAuotjkM4

Oi! Barnier! NO!

Malmesbury said:

Since things are a little heated around here... Time to start a real fight

Chorizo in Paella - yes or no?

Flatlander said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Stocky said:

CarlottaVance said:

Poll on "what to do with extra vaccines":

https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1359905043051290626?s=20

https://twitter.com/KellyIpsosMORI/status/1359905050844397569?s=20

So that's Ireland and the EU out of it.....

Why do pollsters still try to polarise the country into remain and leave by analysing their findings in this way? It`s becoming irritating.

Because alongside age and educational attainment level, how people voted in the referendum are pretty good predictors for how people will vote on a whole range of opinions.

Other correlations are available...

It looks like they didn't even offer Ireland as a choice.

maaarsh said:

Black_Rook said:

CarlottaVance said:

https://twitter.com/PHE_uk/status/1359916078130991104?s=20

I make that about 450k added to the first dose count, so it looks very much as if the NHS is going to get to fifteen million by February 15th with room to spare. The only question is, therefore, how many of those in the top four priority cohorts will, by then, have either been missed or refused. Indeed, at the present rate of progress, and given anecdata on the subject seen here and elsewhere, a significant minority of the 65-69's should've cleared through vaccination by that date.

The actual target is 14.6m, so they should be there near as damnit by tomorrow night given the reported figures are a day late already. Then the weekend will all be jam on top.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Gardenwalker said:

TOPPING said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Lol.

Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de

As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.

Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.

That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.

Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"

Lol.

He is one of the many EU obsessed “self-righteous brothers” that infest this site.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EqPAuotjkM4

Oi! Barnier! NO!

Using words like 'demented beliefs' and posters who 'infest this site says more about you then any poster on here

Simply no need

We can all disagree with each other but being rank unpleasant is unnecessary

FF43 said:

Furthermore, and this is a curious thing, it is in the EU's interest to maximise Brexit loss and the UK's interest to minimise it. Yet the UK Leaver government does nothing to minimise the loss. Instead it aggravates it. The UK government is doing the EU a favour here.

Leon said:

FF43 said:

FF43 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

It's in the UK's interest to have its cake and eat it, which is how Johnson put it. For powerful and specific reasons that is not at all in the EU's interest - mainly because as with all membership organisations they need to maximise the value of membership. Brexit was sold on no loss. The EU needs to make sure no other country tries that again by allowing that loss to happen. Having a good relationship with the UK is a nice to have, but is secondary. What's maybe interesting is that member states are completely aligned with the EU on that. They aren't the Commission and you might expect them to have different views.

I should have added, reasonableness isn't much of a concept in international relations. I don't think the EU either expects the UK to be reasonable or to be reasonable themselves. The questions are where are the points of agreement and what can you get the other side to commit to?

The relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, unique in the world of democracy. It is in the best interests of the EU that the UK do BADLY and SUFFER, so that all other states are discouraged from leaving. And this is exactly how they are acting, not just neutral, but hostile and pernicious. They are TRYING to make life as hard as possible for us.

This attitude is not repeated anywhere else across the free world. as far as I know.

It makes them a bunch of wankers, but logical wankers. They are behaving rationally, albeit with narrow self interest, and a great deal of insecurity (a confident EU would have shrugged off Brexit and would be happy to do better deals).

This is not going to change for the foreseeable. We are confronted with a hostile trading bloc on our doorstep. Our only choice is to grovel for a change of heart, or be hostile right back, while trying to undermine them. Or unite with America and then invade.

Gardenwalker said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Gardenwalker said:

TOPPING said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Gardenwalker said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

FF43 said:

Gardenwalker said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

FF43 said:

Stocky said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

Have to confess, the overnight loss of all EU share trading to Amsterdam, is the first bit of Project Fear which has:

1 Come true

AND

2 Given me the fear

One kinda knew it was coming, but the speed and scale still shocks. It might even make me regret my vote, if only the EU had not behaved with such flailing, malignant incompetence, in recent weeks.

But, if the City does collapse (quick or slow), we are in deep shit. Massively in debt just as our tax base disappears. Not good. Not good at all.

Although in the super long term - which is how Brexit must be judged to have any chance of being deemed a success - a less bloated City could be a good thing. Yes, it pays lots of tax, but it also sucks so much talent and energy and resource and focus out of other (arguably more value added) sectors and it adds enormously to regional inequalities. How many smart young Northerners, for example, who could have stayed up there and worked in high tech manufacturing or renewable energy or medical research - or a hundred other things that could flourish outside London and the South East given the steer - end up instead sitting in a trading floor in EC4 or Canary, or a room in Mayfair, dreaming up "products" to help the crooked rich launder their money and dodge tax etc etc? It's a huge number. Think of the potential wasted. It's the British disease, along with private schools.

You emotional remainers (as distinct the reluctant, pragmatic remainers like me) really struggle to accept that Brexit is already, and always will be, judged as a success by those who voted for it. They are delighted - delighted - that we have left the EU. That`s it.

Does that mean you think it's a success or you can understand why people think it's a success?

Because from my perspective, Brexit looks massively unsuccessful, and I am not as an emotional a Remainer as all that. It's simply that things have turned out pretty much as I expected them to, given that the project was based on assumptions that, while being reasonable in themselves, were never likely to pan out. Same as the Iraq War. I knew from the off that was unlikely to turn out well. It wasn't that I objected to removing a horrible dictator.

The latter : I can understand why people think it's a success.

This is interesting. Would it be fair to say you are an emotional Leaver, who would like Brexit to be a success but hasn't been invested enough in the project at any point to ignore the practical problems with it? But really you would have like to have voted Leave, if only you could have made it add up?

It seems to me this is different from another group of people who voted Remain but are now fully on board and have the same view of Brexit reality as those that voted Leave. I would call those people Leavers.

@FF43 For me the referendum offered us a dire choice. Like being given a stick to grasp with shit at both ends. I dallied with voting leave, but dismissed this because my chief reason would have been out of spite towards Cameron who I blamed (and still do) for having the bloody referendum in the first place.

Vote to leave = pragmatically stupid; you can`t just leave decades of international diplomacy and peace-keeping. Vote to stay = poorer position within the EU and any scope we had to moderate its aims would be diminished.

The other influence on me was the environmental work that the EU has done - particularly on rewilding. Monbiot was similarly conflicted but voted remain in the end for this reason.

So it was a clear remain vote from me in the end, but I have no love for the EU and like most pragmatic remainers on balance wish it didn`t exist at all because it puts the UK in a quandary - but while it does we should have remained in it and piss inside the tent.

Best we can hope for now is other nations leave too and the project crumbles.

Thanks. I accept wanting the EU to collapse is a rational desire for a UK that is outside the project. It's not a view I take myself, partly emotional I guess, because I think the EU is good for Europe, whether the UK is in it or not, and partly practical because now we have left we have to deal with the EU as it is. We have no say on that and it's not good either for us or our partners to get drawn into deciding what they should do.

It is clearly in our interests to have a wealthy and stable Europe, and in that sense having the EU next to us works well.

On the other hand, a Europe that self-consciously sees itself as competing *against* the U.K., whether economically or diplomatically, is more problematic.

It is already clear that U.K. was able to block or temper certain foreign policy instincts in the EU, and it is not a good thing that we have surrendered that leverage.

As Donald Tusk, I think, put it, it isn't in the interests of the EU to protect the UK from the consequences of its decision to leave the European Union. There are several motivations behind the EU move to make things more difficult for the UK, some strategic, some opportunistic, some principled and some emotional. Those reasons are powerful and the UK won't get anywhere by saying the EU is unreasonable.

Nevertheless it's also in the EU and its members' interest to have a good relationship with a powerful near country, given that it has decided to leave the Union. There is a tension there. To satisfy both interests the EU needs to come up with an arrangement that is distinctly inferior to membership, yet is still valuable to the third party. I don't think they have worked that one out yet.

Actually your last paragraph puts the lie to your first.

It is very much in the interests of the UK to say the EU is being unreasonable. If they are going to persist in that attitude then we have nothing to gain from having a good relationship with them. If they expect us to behave reasonably towards them then they have to reciprocate. It is a two way relationship and both sides have to be reasonable. If either is not then the whole thing fails.

The EU so far does not seem to have grasped this basic concept. They recognise that the UK could potentially be a threat to them if it follows a certain course (and I am not advocating that) but seem to be unwilling to do anything to prevent that happening.

Lol.

Right now Rickhardt Tindellwanger is staying the precise opposite on PB.de

As I have already observed you clearly don't believe in people being reasonable. I think your extremist views are rather unfortunate when so many people on both sides are advocating common sense approaches. Thankfully you are in a small minority that can easily be ignored.

Nowhere have I said the people should not be reasonable.

That is your, barmy, interpretation, straight after a post where you called me both a fascist and a communist.

Dickie's winning rhetorical style is to say something like "you would have run up behind that disabled person in the queue at Aldi and hit her over the head with a bag of chips so I think we can ignore your views about EU Reg EU/43G/2021/RX"

Lol.

He is one of the many EU obsessed “self-righteous brothers” that infest this site.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EqPAuotjkM4

Oi! Barnier! NO!

Using words like 'demented beliefs' and posters who 'infest this site says more about you then any poster on here

Simply no need

We can all disagree with each other but being rank unpleasant is unnecessary

Oh god. Mary Whitehouse has woken up.

Richard_Nabavi said:

FF43 said:

Furthermore, and this is a curious thing, it is in the EU's interest to maximise Brexit loss and the UK's interest to minimise it. Yet the UK Leaver government does nothing to minimise the loss. Instead it aggravates it. The UK government is doing the EU a favour here.

Astute point. It really is weird.

Pulpstar said:

14,500 and 800 (reported) today I reckon.