As is being widely there is a huge impasse between London and Brussels over the position of Northern Ireland. The real problem is that that the basic premise of the deal that brought peace to Northern Ireland in 1998 was that both countries would remain within the EU.
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It does not prevent customs posts at the Irish border if Boris decided to move the hard border from the Irish Sea to Ireland, albeit that also means the end of the EU trade deal and WTO terms for the UK
We can - justly - be very proud of the British vaccination programme, while I think also admitting that the gap between us and our European neighbours has narrowed somewhat.
The figures I'm slightly surprised by in here are for France: because on the EU's own figures, it is only slightly behind Germany/Italy/Spain for proportion of adults. *Plus*, of course, France is vaccinating 12-17 year olds. Of course, there are more kids in France than in most other EU countries, but not that many more.
I’m in a pub for the fist time in ages and it has table ordering, though you can go to the bar if you want.
I don’t want: I much prefer this way of doing it!
Hopefully it will stay as an option even when we are back to normal.
I do agree though, I much prefer app ordering. Means I don’t have to strain to hear the bar staff, or leave a table unoccupied when I’m on my own and come back to find somebody sitting at it.
Beyond that - a lot of people have been saying the exact same thing Mike is saying here for about 18 months (I highlighted the issue to the candidate who is now my MP back in December 2019, and everything I warned him about off the top of my head has come true).
What boggles the mind is that not only did our negotiators not understand the deal, they assumed that when it all flushed out the other side that they could just make whatever changes they wanted.
Reminds me of an overrider agreement argument with Woolworths when their Sales Director was incandescent about the lack of cash being paid to him. We pointed out that his new sales strategy was explicitly against the terms of the agreement.
"This is an awful punative agreement" he argued
"But when we negotiated it that whole section was your proposal!" we responded
"That was different" etc
It would also be useful for ordering rounds: no more coming back to find you got the order wrong, which seems to happen more as the evening goes on for some reason.
You off on your well-earned holidays then? Hope you have a good one.
Iceland 90% one dose, over 80% two doses
Bulgaria - errm err...
Our vaccine programme has, IMO, had a poor finish. We were too late ordering our second batch of Pfizer, we didn't order enough Moderna and aiui, we turned down a very early opportunity to work with Moderna on UK manufacturing in favour of procurement of Pfizer. That's why Moderna is in Switzerland for substance and Spain for fill and finish. That was a poor decision as having a very high grade domestically manufactured mRNA vaccine would have been a huge win for us. We still have other good deals done but that would have been the cherry on the cake. Our booster programme would have been a 60m order of variant busting Moderna.
In the long term if covid remains a problem, which looks likely, we really want the ability to identify new variants, make new vaccines, and vaccinate as many people as necessary as quickly as possible.
There's 10m people who have had one dose only. Even if we aren't going to expand first dose numbers much can we not speed up 2nd doses? The data shows we were 10m lower on 1st doses in mid May, so get them pulled in quicker.
Let NI be within the UK market and the EU market simultaneously with no checks either direction. And no tying the UK to the EU. Let businesses and people in NI choose whether they wish to follow EU rules or UK rules, just as they can choose Irish passports or British passports.
Until then the UK should invoke Article 16, refuse to put up any border in either direction and call the EU's bluff daring them to put in checks within Ireland since they won't be able to have any in the Irish Sea anymore between GB and NI. If they don't, and we don't, then problem solved. If they do, then let them come up with new solutions that serve Britain's interests.
Under no circumstances should we agree to alignment.
Designed
I know it seems pedantic, but it's just my kneejerk teacher's proof reading brain.
Its been sped up to eight weeks already. JCVI have said they don't want to speed it up past that, because they believe it reduces efficacy of the second dose.
Its now at eight weeks because that's what works best clinically, not because of constrained supply.
But I don’t think it would be feasible. Quite apart from the large minorities of Unionists in say, Londonderry, and the similar Nationalist communities in Belfast, where would the water and electricity supplies come from?
I'll go for 56,000 as an actual guess which would be a reasonably good number.
Incidentally the amount of people going down the logical fallacy of "you negotiated this, you shouldn't want to renegotiate it now" is farcical. Its extremely common to negotiate agreements then revisit them down the line once you've had the opportunity to see how they work in practice, or to come in with new demands you didn't think you could get agreed last time.
Most people have their salaries renegotiated on an annual or similar basis. Saying "you negotiated this in the past, so the case is closed" doesn't work with that as people go back to revisit and renegotiate their contracts regularly. Same here with Brussels, its time to renegotiate whatever we're not happy with - and if we can't, we can always invoke Article 16.
It's a pleasant 28o in my home pub.
What will make for entertaining reading is the reaction of allies and future trading relationship partners like America. They made very clear how they will react to us crapping over the GFA and not honouring treaties.
Its hardly like Just Eat where the commission is for orders that wouldn't have happened if you'd not signed up.
Just as the UK government edged to my position pre-Brexit away from May's.
If they'd just let me be in control of this whole thing, it would go so much smoother. Or not. 😉
I'm guessing the answer is that it would have been worse for Britain and worse for the EU simultaneously. Since they basically got embarrassed by Britain's success into acting and if we were a part of their scheme that embarrassment wouldn't have happened and they'd have not paid much attention to Israel, or the USA, or where they could have been.
I suspect the monthly fee to the pub / restaurant will differ based on the approach used.
The total viewing figures on the BBC were only fractionally short of the peak of 1.7 million who watched England’s men Twenty20 fixture with Pakistan last Sunday on the BBC. Across all channels, 3.8 million are estimated to have watched some of the match last night, with one-third of those viewers female.
The figures will delight the ECB who have faced years of criticism over locking cricket away behind the Sky paywall. There are only ten of 32 men’s matches live on the BBC and eight from the women’s tournament but the ECB will see those as crucial for building a following away from the mainstream cricket audience.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/07/22/bbc-sky-fire-unreadable-on-screen-hundred-graphics/
1) Boris Johnson's incompetence strikes again and the world is laughing at us.
2) Aussies and New Zealanders are soft arses.
3) It is Rugby League, who gives a pooh? I mean they have the big girl's blouse fifth tackle rule.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-league/2021/07/22/australia-new-zealand-criticised-pulling-rugby-league-world/
The problem with "just invoke Article 16" is all the downstream consequences of doing so. Your position is blissfully naive - then again so was Frost's so yes maybe they should.
I know that you are the fountain of all knowledge and that everything is simple, but in the real world it isn't simple. We can't just either invoke A16 and problem solved, or not stay aligned and just do what we want no matter how many times you say it.
The classic fudge solution is coming. We are aligned now, so all barriers could be dropped now. We say that we reserve the right to diverge, and propose a 3rd party arbiter if either side raises a standards challenge in future. We all get along. So when our new trade deal gets signed with America and we protect food standards as we say we will, there are no problems.
To get there we need to drop our absolutes. I dropped mine, can you drop yours, or is every mistake or difference of opinion to be met with "liar"?
Great Britain
Lewis and Harris
Great Bernera
Scalpay (the one off Harris)
North Uist
Grimsay
Benbecula
South Uist
Skye
Eilean Ban
Bute
Great Cumbrae
Holy Island (the one with Lindisfarne)
Arran
St Michael's Mount
Hayling
Orkney Mainland
Burray
South Ronaldsay
Sanday
(Eday? can't remember)
Stronsay
Shetland Mainland
Yell
Unst
(Bressay? can't remember)
Sheppey
CANVEY (home to Britain's greatest ever musical group!)
5) the NRL in Australia really didn't want to waste time coming to the UK - and don't really care about internationals except say against NZ.
You might need to divert your tanks from Scotland to the Emerald Isle.
Woman who shielded for nine months killed by lorry on first day out while searching for a facemask in her handbag.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/21/woman-killed-lorry-first-day-shielding-nine-months/
Anyway, your classic fudge solution you've just proposed is what I've proposed as the solution many times before. Don't commit to maintain aligned (its the commitment that's the problem), but for anything where we are aligned there's no reason we should have checks just because the alignment isn't permanently committed to. I also proposed the independent arbitration in the past too.
So if that's what you're ready to accept, its what I was already suggesting as the long term solution. Reality catching up with me again? I'll try to be humble, honest.
Hooray! We’ve got a massive television audience for the first time in years. We should have done this ages ago. What silly bastard sold the rights to a disgraced Aussie pornographer who...ah.
YOU CANNOT BLAME BORIS FOR THE GOOD FRIDAY AGREEMENT.
THANK YOU
http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_newdeal.html
It is a mystery to me how anyone thought that this would be easy and I say that as someone who was in favour of Brexit. The honest answer is that our political leaders just didn't care enough about NI to want to address the problem properly.
Blessed relief tbh.
If what you're saying now is that you misread the data then fair enough, that's an error. So I don't see why you're ashamed at having it put down to being an error.
If you want to let it drop, I'd already dropped it. You chose to pick the scab, not me.
No, I dot mean will lots of extra people get the jab, I mean will the % vaccinated change on the government COVID dashboard vaccination page?
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations
According to the header at the top of that page, from today they will use mid 2020 population estimates insted of mid 2019 population estimates, for calculating the %
The numbers at the moment:
46,388,744 first doses which equates to 88.1% of all over 18s implying a population of 52,654,647 people over the age of 18 in the UK.
Now some have speculated with good reason, that many EU nationals who where formally living and working in the UK at the start of the pandemic, have left since then, partly as their jobs disappeared in the pandemic, partly because they wanted to be near there family's at a time of stress, and partly because of BREXIT. this may be overstated, but there are probably more who have left than arrived, we don't know haw many but will find out soon.
If its 2 million, which is probably far to high, but I'll do the calculation:
Then Population of 50,654,647 and 46,388,744 first jabs equates to 91.6% vaccinated adults.
if its 1,111,599 people than:
Then population of 51,543,049 and 46,388,744 first jabs equates to 90.00% vaccinated adults.
Even if its just half a million people then that will push us to 90% ish
Could be a lot less then half a million,
Anybody what to speculation as to what the new population estimate will be?
I'm going to guess just under a million, (based on absolutely nothing)
Its like Team Boris know they are the dumbest people in the room, but think that if they can normalise dumb that nobody will notice.
* By 'we' I really mean 'he'.