“US and Iran agree in principle to a deal, then disagree on every single clause.” a European official speaking to Faytuks Network says
Mainly from the US side, partly due to Israel obvs
‘ It is also important to acknowledge that there are people whose entire careers depend on the continuation of the confrontation with Iran.
Admitting that this strategy has failed would inevitably force a reckoning, not only with the collapse of a long-held policy concept, but also with the fact that their own professional future may suddenly become uncertain.
That is why many of them will continue arguing that “just a little more pressure” would have worked; that there is always one more idea to topple the regime; that Iran is supposedly on the verge of economic collapse; that its oil infrastructure is about to fail; that one more strike, one more round of sanctions, one more covert campaign will finally break the system.
But these arguments avoid the central lesson that should already be obvious: there is no purely kinetic solution to the problem called Iran.’
The US and Israel will not win. Whether they realise it now or in twenty years
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
We need to completely detach ourselves from retained EU law.
It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum. https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511
It's not as simple as Ben Judah suggests.
The similarity between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is both now inhabit small areas of strength surrounded by vast oceans of weakness. Occasionally, the LD and Conservative areas overlap as in Godalming and Farnham to give a couple of examples but in London for example the areas of LD strength in the south west saw the Conservatives almost excised at the beginning of the month.
Conversely, the Conservatives prospered in the south east and other parts of the other suburbs as well as inner south west London where the LDs are non existant and of course both parties have largely been removed from inner east London and even outer east London saw the Conservatives trounced in Havering.
The majority of the Conservatives and Lib Dems now in the Commons will be hard for the other three main parties to shift and indeed form a significant bloc to a majority Government.
Ignoring his rather stupid point about Brexit, I think it is correct that the Tories will now need to concentrate on their regional redoubts. These are: fairly significant parts of London, the South East, and the South West, the Scottish Borders, and quite possibly North East Scotland (winning Aberdeen South would be a huge boost). That's not nothing, and barring a Reform implosion, they should seek to dominate and expand on these strongholds.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
We need to completely detach ourselves from retained EU law.
I couldn't agree more - this is my whole point. The road to British recovery lies through removing the remaining vestiges of EU law. We cannot keep ourselves (as some wish us to be, and as SKS Government policy dictates) ready to rejoin by keeping it all intact, and expect to deal with the issues we face. It's got to go. And if it goes, it pushes rejoin further away.
“US and Iran agree in principle to a deal, then disagree on every single clause.” a European official speaking to Faytuks Network says
Mainly from the US side, partly due to Israel obvs
‘ It is also important to acknowledge that there are people whose entire careers depend on the continuation of the confrontation with Iran.
Admitting that this strategy has failed would inevitably force a reckoning, not only with the collapse of a long-held policy concept, but also with the fact that their own professional future may suddenly become uncertain.
That is why many of them will continue arguing that “just a little more pressure” would have worked; that there is always one more idea to topple the regime; that Iran is supposedly on the verge of economic collapse; that its oil infrastructure is about to fail; that one more strike, one more round of sanctions, one more covert campaign will finally break the system.
But these arguments avoid the central lesson that should already be obvious: there is no purely kinetic solution to the problem called Iran.’
The US and Israel will not win. Whether they realise it now or in twenty years
If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon. Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn't even fully negotiated yet. So don't listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about. Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don't make bad deals! President DJT
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon. Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn't even fully negotiated yet. So don't listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about. Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don't make bad deals! President DJT
So basically he just wants to be able to declare it is over (again), so his media mouthpieces can claim total victory whilst a bunch of more serious types in the government deal with the punt into the long grass.
Probably a sensible move on his part in order to move on. So long as fighting does not break out again before the midterms or (hopefully) the next presidential election, no one ever need care about the details.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
So are France, Spain, Poland, Italy and every other EU country, yet they do not have the same problem.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
I see the value in some quangos, but we probably don't need as many as we have, and politicians need to push back on the idea it is not proper for them to weigh in directly on some things.
I would generally support that, even if I might not like some of the choices, but I don't think the general public does. However, whilst there would be a short term hit from them pushing back on such things, I think the public would actually respond longer term to what would once again seem normal, rather than politicians playing into self-hating cynicism about governance.
Got to be honest... this isn't a brilliant poll for Labour, if they are reliant on Restore trying to get over the line. It's like the frog relying on the scorpion. Mind you, the Tories being on 2% is absolutely pathetic. Nice one Kemi.
Makerfield is only the 29th Reform target seat, Labour could lose Makerfield and still have an overall majority. So if Reform fail to win it, even due to Restore, that would be a disaster for Farage.
Makerfield has never been won by the Conservatives so there won’t be players there anyway
Have the Conservative Party actually given up on around 300 seats.
They never gave up like this before under any leadership.
It's lazy It lacks vision It stinks of arrogance
That Kemi is not going in hard to win Bootle is lazy, lacking in vision, stinks of arrogance? Bugger off.
That the Tories are still competing in 350 seats will come as a shock to those who have been reading the Party its Last Rites since before 2024. Remember those posters on here claiming there was a real chance the Tories would come out the 2024 election with zero seats? Some of us remember who thery were. Not exactly a credit to the reputation of political betting, eh?
Good morning
While labour tears itself apart it seems it's all about Kemi and the conservatives polling in a seat they would never win, and where their vote will go tactically either to Reform or Labour, which in my case would be Labour as the perfect result for me would be the end of Starmer's premiership and a bloody nose to Farage
The first requirement for the conservatives is to have a leader who polls well and that is undeniable the case with Kemi
The next requirement is to develop policies and take the fight to labour as they come into the post Starmer world of crisis with no money, and a party unable to contemplate radical change not only to benefits, but to pay for defence, and to revolutionise the way we allow youth unemployment at the high levels we are now experiencing
The fact Kemi is 'catnip' to some who wouldn't vote for her is hardly of importance to her mps and supporters who have her at 85% approval
Does Kemi have appeal outside her own tribe? No.
She is less like Blair, Cameron or Thatcher and more like Corbyn, Milliband and Hague. All popular with their own supporters.
Read into that what you will.
Give it time - there is 3 years to GE 29
Give what time? Badenoch is going to do a 180 and start to try to appeal to voters outside her core? I think you might be blind to how tribal her approach has been, because it speaks to you. Perhaps understandable given the dire circumstances she faces, the first opposition leader since Foot not to benefit from an unpopular government. She has to shore up the base.
It is not only her 85% approval amongst her supporters but she beats Starmer by +8 and Farage by +15 as best PM
I doubt those attacking Kemi want Farage but that is the likely consequence if she fails
That argument needs a robust cordon sanitaire between the Conservatives and Reform. The sort of thing that is just about holding in Germany. It means saying, clearly and repeatedly, that the grift, incompetence and some of the policies of Reform are beyond the pale. That, however bad they are in other ways, parties of the centre and left are preferable.
It may be me missing it, but I'm not hearing that. I'm mostly not seeing it in the arrangements coming out of this month's council elections, either. As an increasingly lapsed Conservative wet, there's no way I'm voting for a party that might, however reluctantly, bring Reform into government.
Would you prefer a Reform Government with a parliamentary majority, or a Reform coalition with the Conservatives?
Both sound dreadful.
Of course they do to you. A second Labour majority vs. a Labour-Green coalition are both pretty horrifying prospects to me, but I know which I'd prefer - the first.
Yes, but a Conservative majority government wasn't one of the choices. How would you pick between Labour/Green coalition and a Green government ?
I would choose a Labour Green coalition from those choices, because clearly the Labour part would at least be some sort of moderating force, and would have more experience.
“US and Iran agree in principle to a deal, then disagree on every single clause.” a European official speaking to Faytuks Network says
Mainly from the US side, partly due to Israel obvs
‘ It is also important to acknowledge that there are people whose entire careers depend on the continuation of the confrontation with Iran.
Admitting that this strategy has failed would inevitably force a reckoning, not only with the collapse of a long-held policy concept, but also with the fact that their own professional future may suddenly become uncertain.
That is why many of them will continue arguing that “just a little more pressure” would have worked; that there is always one more idea to topple the regime; that Iran is supposedly on the verge of economic collapse; that its oil infrastructure is about to fail; that one more strike, one more round of sanctions, one more covert campaign will finally break the system.
But these arguments avoid the central lesson that should already be obvious: there is no purely kinetic solution to the problem called Iran.’
The US and Israel will not win. Whether they realise it now or in twenty years
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
So are France, Spain, Poland, Italy and every other EU country, yet they do not have the same problem.
Why ?
A good question. If they do not, then let's copy them.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
High speed railway line has just been built to Bordeaux for a tiny cost, within the EU, complying to EU law.
The EU probably makes such schemes cheaper, through standardisation, they certainly don't make them more expensive.
It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum. https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511
It's not as simple as Ben Judah suggests.
The similarity between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is both now inhabit small areas of strength surrounded by vast oceans of weakness. Occasionally, the LD and Conservative areas overlap as in Godalming and Farnham to give a couple of examples but in London for example the areas of LD strength in the south west saw the Conservatives almost excised at the beginning of the month.
Conversely, the Conservatives prospered in the south east and other parts of the other suburbs as well as inner south west London where the LDs are non existant and of course both parties have largely been removed from inner east London and even outer east London saw the Conservatives trounced in Havering.
The majority of the Conservatives and Lib Dems now in the Commons will be hard for the other three main parties to shift and indeed form a significant bloc to a majority Government.
Ignoring his rather stupid point about Brexit, I think it is correct that the Tories will now need to concentrate on their regional redoubts. These are: fairly significant parts of London, the South East, and the South West, the Scottish Borders, and quite possibly North East Scotland (winning Aberdeen South would be a huge boost). That's not nothing, and barring a Reform implosion, they should seek to dominate and expand on these strongholds.
They need to hold firm for a few years and avoid implosion, or submitting entirely to Reform as some of them think they have to. Reform have built over years but are still quite new, it is not an inevitability they will be around for the long haul, and the Tories can chase their tales and try to match them as long as possible, so they can take advantage should Reform's coalition start to struggle.
Indy 500 is spectacular. Rain in the area. A red and a yellow because of it. So every lap is being driven like it’s lap 199. And there’s still 60 to go
“US and Iran agree in principle to a deal, then disagree on every single clause.” a European official speaking to Faytuks Network says
Mainly from the US side, partly due to Israel obvs
‘ It is also important to acknowledge that there are people whose entire careers depend on the continuation of the confrontation with Iran.
Admitting that this strategy has failed would inevitably force a reckoning, not only with the collapse of a long-held policy concept, but also with the fact that their own professional future may suddenly become uncertain.
That is why many of them will continue arguing that “just a little more pressure” would have worked; that there is always one more idea to topple the regime; that Iran is supposedly on the verge of economic collapse; that its oil infrastructure is about to fail; that one more strike, one more round of sanctions, one more covert campaign will finally break the system.
But these arguments avoid the central lesson that should already be obvious: there is no purely kinetic solution to the problem called Iran.’
The US and Israel will not win. Whether they realise it now or in twenty years
Trump chose to alienate all his allies and play nice with Iran's backers in Russia and China.
Could there be a renewed effort if the re-routing of oil makes Hormuz redundant and once Russian oil is back fully on the market?
Longer term there has to be. Tactically a smart move, strategically a disaster.
Israel could build the ‘Ben Gurion canal’.
Other nations pipelines east to west.
Iran, and everyone else, surely knew the potential impact they could have on Hormuz, with the expected knock on effects. It hadn't been worth them exercising it, or others fully developing and utilising alternative routes, until their backs were against the wall. Now everyone have seen the card played, they now have little option to engage the workarounds.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps if they'd called it a bat cave instead people would have been okay with it?
One of the frustration of massively overbudget projects caused by red tape is superficial defences are used which make the delays and cost overruns somehow a positive, but implying (or stating) it is necessary to ensure top quality, even when that quality or protection is way more than is reasonably necessary for vital strategic interests).
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
I see the value in some quangos, but we probably don't need as many as we have, and politicians need to push back on the idea it is not proper for them to weigh in directly on some things.
I would generally support that, even if I might not like some of the choices, but I don't think the general public does. However, whilst there would be a short term hit from them pushing back on such things, I think the public would actually respond longer term to what would once again seem normal, rather than politicians playing into self-hating cynicism about governance.
I think it's about explaining to the public why a quango operating with no ministerial oversight is bad news. We all like the phrase 'independent of Government' because it makes an organisation sound impartial and unsullied by headline-grabbing, but it actually means 'unaccountable' - no need to respond to the electorate's wishes or account for their actions to ministers. And worst of all, no need to consider the wider implications when applying their powers.
If we had debates on the unaccountability of the Bank of England and the unaccountability of the Sentencing Council, rather than the 'independence' of these organisations, it might put a more realistic perspective on things.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
I see the value in some quangos, but we probably don't need as many as we have, and politicians need to push back on the idea it is not proper for them to weigh in directly on some things.
I would generally support that, even if I might not like some of the choices, but I don't think the general public does. However, whilst there would be a short term hit from them pushing back on such things, I think the public would actually respond longer term to what would once again seem normal, rather than politicians playing into self-hating cynicism about governance.
I think it's about explaining to the public why a quango operating with no ministerial oversight is bad news. We all like the phrase 'independent of Government' because it makes an organisation sound impartial and unsullied by headline-grabbing, but it actually means 'unaccountable' - no need to respond to the electorate's wishes or account for their actions to ministers. If we had debates on the unaccountability of the Bank of England and the unaccountability of the Sentencing Council, rather than the 'independence' of these organisations, it might put a more realistic perspective on things.
Well put. We might not agree on which should lose independence/become accountable, but it should be more of a conversation.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
I see the value in some quangos, but we probably don't need as many as we have, and politicians need to push back on the idea it is not proper for them to weigh in directly on some things.
I would generally support that, even if I might not like some of the choices, but I don't think the general public does. However, whilst there would be a short term hit from them pushing back on such things, I think the public would actually respond longer term to what would once again seem normal, rather than politicians playing into self-hating cynicism about governance.
I think it's about explaining to the public why a quango operating with no ministerial oversight is bad news. We all like the phrase 'independent of Government' because it makes an organisation sound impartial and unsullied by headline-grabbing, but it actually means 'unaccountable' - no need to respond to the electorate's wishes or account for their actions to ministers. And worst of all, no need to consider the wider implications when applying their powers.
If we had debates on the unaccountability of the Bank of England and the unaccountability of the Sentencing Council, rather than the 'independence' of these organisations, it might put a more realistic perspective on things.
They're not unaccountable because the government sets their remit and appoints their leaders.
The advantage is to give them a set of instructions and then let them get on with it without a minister micromanaging. Ministerial micromanagement - to add the bloody expensive Cheryl Gillian tunnels - is one of the reasons HS2 became so expensive.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
I see the value in some quangos, but we probably don't need as many as we have, and politicians need to push back on the idea it is not proper for them to weigh in directly on some things.
I would generally support that, even if I might not like some of the choices, but I don't think the general public does. However, whilst there would be a short term hit from them pushing back on such things, I think the public would actually respond longer term to what would once again seem normal, rather than politicians playing into self-hating cynicism about governance.
I think it's about explaining to the public why a quango operating with no ministerial oversight is bad news. We all like the phrase 'independent of Government' because it makes an organisation sound impartial and unsullied by headline-grabbing, but it actually means 'unaccountable' - no need to respond to the electorate's wishes or account for their actions to ministers. And worst of all, no need to consider the wider implications when applying their powers.
If we had debates on the unaccountability of the Bank of England and the unaccountability of the Sentencing Council, rather than the 'independence' of these organisations, it might put a more realistic perspective on things.
They're not unaccountable because the government sets their remit and appoints their leaders.
The advantage is to give them a set of instructions and then let them get on with it without a minister micromanaging. Ministerial micromanagement - to add the bloody expensive Cheryl Gillian tunnels - is one of the reasons HS2 became so expensive.
That's how they are supposed to work, I'm not convinced all do.
The point about political micromanagement is well made, but it's clearly not being countered by overall ministerial direction as it is supposed to in setting the remit, so it's still also the case that government is too hands off, even as it can make things worse with inconsistent, individual interventions.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
The line that you are highlighting as an example was opened in 2017, before these species regulations had come in.
That said, I am sure that the French do have a far less toxic relationship with EU law than we do, including patriotically ignoring large swathes of it, and probably with agencies that look at things in the round, rather than single issue quangos that can hold up vitally important national projects due to very minor habitat issues.
However, you have not made any practical proposals as to how we can get there without removing the laws. If observing a law is not working, why can we not replace that law with one that will work?
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
The line that you are highlighting as an example was opened in 2017, before these species regulations had come in.
That said, I am sure that the French do have a far less toxic relationship with EU law than we do, including patriotically ignoring large swathes of it, and probably with agencies that look at things in the round, rather than single issue quangos that can hold up vitally important national projects due to very minor habitat issues.
However, you have not made any practical proposals as to how we can get there without removing the laws. If observing a law is not working, why can we not replace that law with one that will work?
I'm saying we do the same as Spain, Italy, Poland and every other country, we deal with the EU in the same manner.
None of them have bat tunnel issues, none of them have construction costs at £1bn / mile, yet we do outside the EU.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
One of the frustration of massively overbudget projects caused by red tape is superficial defences are used which make the delays and cost overruns somehow a positive, but implying (or stating) it is necessary to ensure top quality, even when that quality or protection is way more than is reasonably necessary for vital strategic interests).
In the case of the Bat Tunnel, the bit that nearly everyone missed is…
The chap in charge of it said that the spec was that not a single bat could be harmed.
This is evidence of ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance, because such absolutes are never used in real world engineering - you talk in terms of probabilities. Stupid because the Bat Tunnel as designed couldn’t guarantee that no bats would be harmed.
It is clear that the spec was created by someone who had not even amateur knowledge of engineering or requirements.
This is a U.K. pattern - see the farcical attempts at social engineering in requirement for workforce makeup on the SMR project.
Every village idiot in the system wants to stick their pet ideas in. Despite not having the expertise.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
I see the value in some quangos, but we probably don't need as many as we have, and politicians need to push back on the idea it is not proper for them to weigh in directly on some things.
I would generally support that, even if I might not like some of the choices, but I don't think the general public does. However, whilst there would be a short term hit from them pushing back on such things, I think the public would actually respond longer term to what would once again seem normal, rather than politicians playing into self-hating cynicism about governance.
I think it's about explaining to the public why a quango operating with no ministerial oversight is bad news. We all like the phrase 'independent of Government' because it makes an organisation sound impartial and unsullied by headline-grabbing, but it actually means 'unaccountable' - no need to respond to the electorate's wishes or account for their actions to ministers. And worst of all, no need to consider the wider implications when applying their powers.
If we had debates on the unaccountability of the Bank of England and the unaccountability of the Sentencing Council, rather than the 'independence' of these organisations, it might put a more realistic perspective on things.
They're not unaccountable because the government sets their remit and appoints their leaders.
The advantage is to give them a set of instructions and then let them get on with it without a minister micromanaging. Ministerial micromanagement - to add the bloody expensive Cheryl Gillian tunnels - is one of the reasons HS2 became so expensive.
That's how they are supposed to work, I'm not convinced all do.
The point about political micromanagement is well made, but it's clearly not being countered by overall ministerial direction as it is supposed to in setting the remit, so it's still also the case that government is too hands off, even as it can make things worse with inconsistent, individual interventions.
Sure, but bringing the quango directly into the government department isn't necessarily going to fix that problem.
And the issue is less whether these things are running perfectly, but how do you fix them when they go wrong? (Something always goes wrong).
I think it would be fair to say that sometimes ministers have seen quangos as a useful way to shrug off public anger when things go wrong, which means they're less willing to intervene to assume responsibility. That is an argument in favour of making ministers more directly responsible, rather than having quangos, but I tend to think that good leaders are good at delegating, and that quangos can be a good way to delegate.
One of the frustration of massively overbudget projects caused by red tape is superficial defences are used which make the delays and cost overruns somehow a positive, but implying (or stating) it is necessary to ensure top quality, even when that quality or protection is way more than is reasonably necessary for vital strategic interests).
In the case of the Bat Tunnel, the bit that nearly everyone missed is…
The chap in charge of it said that the spec was that not a single bat could be harmed.
This is evidence of ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance, because such absolutes are never used in real world engineering - you talk in terms of probabilities. Stupid because the Bat Tunnel as designed couldn’t guarantee that no bats would be harmed.
It is clear that the spec was created by someone who had not even amateur knowledge of engineering or requirements.
This is a U.K. pattern - see the farcical attempts at social engineering in requirement for workforce makeup on the SMR project.
Every village idiot in the system wants to stick their pet ideas in. Despite not having the expertise.
Hence why they do not have them in Spain, France....
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
The line that you are highlighting as an example was opened in 2017, before these species regulations had come in.
That said, I am sure that the French do have a far less toxic relationship with EU law than we do, including patriotically ignoring large swathes of it, and probably with agencies that look at things in the round, rather than single issue quangos that can hold up vitally important national projects due to very minor habitat issues.
However, you have not made any practical proposals as to how we can get there without removing the laws. If observing a law is not working, why can we not replace that law with one that will work?
I'm saying we do the same as Spain, Italy, Poland and every other country, we deal with the EU in the same manner.
None of them have bat tunnel issues, none of them have construction costs at £1bn / mile, yet we do outside the EU.
If 27 other countries can do it, so can the UK.
The standard answer to this is that being a law-abiding country is more important to us, for example to our financial industry. Not sure how true it actually is, but it's the reason often given.
Here's a paper arguing that it might be common law....
Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.
Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
It is, and she will always have that. It’s such a shame as when she broke through it looked like she could be an all time great, but I don’t think she has enough grit in here. Murray made the most of what he had, worked himself doubly hard in order to try to be near the level of the big three. I see little evidence that Raducanu has the same level of drive. That and her inability to stick with a coach sends a message.
She took her chance when it came. She didn't choose who she had to play against. She added enormously to the gaiety of nations. She won one more major than me and one more than Tim Henman. She is the 37th best woman player in the world out of a female population of four billion. Give her a break.
Even if she never wins another match, she won as many grand slams as any female British singles player in the open era except Virginia Wade. And more than any man other than Andy Murray.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
The line that you are highlighting as an example was opened in 2017, before these species regulations had come in.
That said, I am sure that the French do have a far less toxic relationship with EU law than we do, including patriotically ignoring large swathes of it, and probably with agencies that look at things in the round, rather than single issue quangos that can hold up vitally important national projects due to very minor habitat issues.
However, you have not made any practical proposals as to how we can get there without removing the laws. If observing a law is not working, why can we not replace that law with one that will work?
I'm saying we do the same as Spain, Italy, Poland and every other country, we deal with the EU in the same manner.
None of them have bat tunnel issues, none of them have construction costs at £1bn / mile, yet we do outside the EU.
If 27 other countries can do it, so can the UK.
The standard answer to this is that being a law-abiding country is more important to us, for example to our financial industry. Not sure how true it actually is, but it's the reason often given.
Here's a paper arguing that it might be common law....
It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum. https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511
It's not as simple as Ben Judah suggests.
The similarity between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is both now inhabit small areas of strength surrounded by vast oceans of weakness. Occasionally, the LD and Conservative areas overlap as in Godalming and Farnham to give a couple of examples but in London for example the areas of LD strength in the south west saw the Conservatives almost excised at the beginning of the month.
Conversely, the Conservatives prospered in the south east and other parts of the other suburbs as well as inner south west London where the LDs are non existant and of course both parties have largely been removed from inner east London and even outer east London saw the Conservatives trounced in Havering.
The majority of the Conservatives and Lib Dems now in the Commons will be hard for the other three main parties to shift and indeed form a significant bloc to a majority Government.
Ignoring his rather stupid point about Brexit, I think it is correct that the Tories will now need to concentrate on their regional redoubts. These are: fairly significant parts of London, the South East, and the South West, the Scottish Borders, and quite possibly North East Scotland (winning Aberdeen South would be a huge boost). That's not nothing, and barring a Reform implosion, they should seek to dominate and expand on these strongholds.
Not enough for a majority or anything approaching it and the local elections showed how in a number of areas they are going backwards.
Against the LDs, the Conservatives are currently in retreat but that can all change and past Conservative majorities (1979, 2015) have been built on the corpses of Liberal/Lib Dem MPs.
The question is whether the Conservatives can hold off Reform and pick up seats from Labour and someone else argued the range could be 90-150 and I'd go along with that for now but with the caveat there's plenty of time for things to change.
The current fragmentation works really well for parties who can concentrate their strength.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
It suggests we stop and start and do not have the skills.
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
I see the value in some quangos, but we probably don't need as many as we have, and politicians need to push back on the idea it is not proper for them to weigh in directly on some things.
I would generally support that, even if I might not like some of the choices, but I don't think the general public does. However, whilst there would be a short term hit from them pushing back on such things, I think the public would actually respond longer term to what would once again seem normal, rather than politicians playing into self-hating cynicism about governance.
I think it's about explaining to the public why a quango operating with no ministerial oversight is bad news. We all like the phrase 'independent of Government' because it makes an organisation sound impartial and unsullied by headline-grabbing, but it actually means 'unaccountable' - no need to respond to the electorate's wishes or account for their actions to ministers. And worst of all, no need to consider the wider implications when applying their powers.
If we had debates on the unaccountability of the Bank of England and the unaccountability of the Sentencing Council, rather than the 'independence' of these organisations, it might put a more realistic perspective on things.
They're not unaccountable because the government sets their remit and appoints their leaders.
The advantage is to give them a set of instructions and then let them get on with it without a minister micromanaging. Ministerial micromanagement - to add the bloody expensive Cheryl Gillian tunnels - is one of the reasons HS2 became so expensive.
Then they're not independent. Independence and unaccountability are two ways of expressing the same concept.
At any rate, that isn't really true. The Bank of England's remit on inflation has not been changed by ministers since it was established, Ministers don't appint the MPC, and an incoming Chancellor sacking the Governor and appointing a new one would be widely condemned. Meanwhile, the Bank of England is one of the worst performing agencies in the whole world. Yet the Governor remains and they sail on untroubled.
The point about ministers is not that they're better at doing things (though they could hardly be worse), but that they are accountable to the electorate if it goes wrong.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
It suggests we stop and start and do not have the skills.
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
Have no skills and they will happen.
If we committed £1bn/year to building High Speed Rail for the next 50 years and £500m a year to electrify the railway, until it is done, we would develop huge skills and very efficient teams.
One of the frustration of massively overbudget projects caused by red tape is superficial defences are used which make the delays and cost overruns somehow a positive, but implying (or stating) it is necessary to ensure top quality, even when that quality or protection is way more than is reasonably necessary for vital strategic interests).
In the case of the Bat Tunnel, the bit that nearly everyone missed is…
The chap in charge of it said that the spec was that not a single bat could be harmed.
This is evidence of ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance, because such absolutes are never used in real world engineering - you talk in terms of probabilities. Stupid because the Bat Tunnel as designed couldn’t guarantee that no bats would be harmed.
It is clear that the spec was created by someone who had not even amateur knowledge of engineering or requirements.
This is a U.K. pattern - see the farcical attempts at social engineering in requirement for workforce makeup on the SMR project.
Every village idiot in the system wants to stick their pet ideas in. Despite not having the expertise.
Hold on. Hold on! Are you trying to say that being a 'professional manager' maybe even with an MBA doesn't mean you can just manage anything at all when you're drafted in?
If so, I hold the evidence of the massive success of British Management in both the private and public sectors over the past 50 years or so against you. See?
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
It suggests we stop and start and do not have the skills.
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
Have no skills and they will happen.
If we committed £1bn/year to building High Speed Rail for the next 50 years and £500m a year to electrify the railway, until it is done, we would develop huge skills and very efficient teams.
One of the frustration of massively overbudget projects caused by red tape is superficial defences are used which make the delays and cost overruns somehow a positive, but implying (or stating) it is necessary to ensure top quality, even when that quality or protection is way more than is reasonably necessary for vital strategic interests).
In the case of the Bat Tunnel, the bit that nearly everyone missed is…
The chap in charge of it said that the spec was that not a single bat could be harmed.
This is evidence of ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance, because such absolutes are never used in real world engineering - you talk in terms of probabilities. Stupid because the Bat Tunnel as designed couldn’t guarantee that no bats would be harmed.
It is clear that the spec was created by someone who had not even amateur knowledge of engineering or requirements.
This is a U.K. pattern - see the farcical attempts at social engineering in requirement for workforce makeup on the SMR project.
Every village idiot in the system wants to stick their pet ideas in. Despite not having the expertise.
Hold on. Hold on! Are you trying to say that being a 'professional manager' maybe even with an MBA doesn't mean you can just manage anything at all when you're drafted in?
If so, I hold the evidence of the massive success of British Management in both the private and public sectors over the past 50 years or so against you. See?
...
oh.
People are promoted until they are incompetent klaxon
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
I see the value in some quangos, but we probably don't need as many as we have, and politicians need to push back on the idea it is not proper for them to weigh in directly on some things.
I would generally support that, even if I might not like some of the choices, but I don't think the general public does. However, whilst there would be a short term hit from them pushing back on such things, I think the public would actually respond longer term to what would once again seem normal, rather than politicians playing into self-hating cynicism about governance.
I think it's about explaining to the public why a quango operating with no ministerial oversight is bad news. We all like the phrase 'independent of Government' because it makes an organisation sound impartial and unsullied by headline-grabbing, but it actually means 'unaccountable' - no need to respond to the electorate's wishes or account for their actions to ministers. And worst of all, no need to consider the wider implications when applying their powers.
If we had debates on the unaccountability of the Bank of England and the unaccountability of the Sentencing Council, rather than the 'independence' of these organisations, it might put a more realistic perspective on things.
They're not unaccountable because the government sets their remit and appoints their leaders.
The advantage is to give them a set of instructions and then let them get on with it without a minister micromanaging. Ministerial micromanagement - to add the bloody expensive Cheryl Gillian tunnels - is one of the reasons HS2 became so expensive.
Then they're not independent. Independence and unaccountability are two ways of expressing the same concept.
At any rate, that isn't really true. The Bank of England's remit on inflation has not been changed by ministers since it was established, Ministers don't appint the MPC, and an incoming Chancellor sacking the Governor and appointing a new one would be widely condemned. Meanwhile, the Bank of England is one of the worst performing agencies in the whole world. Yet the Governor remains and they sail on untroubled.
The point about ministers is not that they're better at doing things (though they could hardly be worse), but that they are accountable to the electorate if it goes wrong.
Further to this, the other good thing about Ministers is that they have to consider everything in the round. Natural England makes decisions which have massive economical and social impacts, but their only responsibility is to the bats. Single issue quangos weilding enormous power outside of democratic accountability is very bad news.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
It suggests we stop and start and do not have the skills.
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
Have no skills and they will happen.
If we committed £1bn/year to building High Speed Rail for the next 50 years and £500m a year to electrify the railway, until it is done, we would develop huge skills and very efficient teams.
We don't, we turn the tap on and off randomly.
The same applies to literally anything.
agreed
Which may explain the rise of China and their centuary plan
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
It suggests we stop and start and do not have the skills.
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
Have no skills and they will happen.
It’s not so much having no skills as the cult of The Generalist.
When the MoD binned the ammunition buying unit, their successors proudly bought the cheapest ammunition they could find. I asked a chap who worked at the Cabinet Office - he was indignant, giving me a whole soliloquy on duty of care, best practise etc. And finished with - “Do you think that the ammunition for the British Army should be bought by a bunch of gun nuts?”
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
It suggests we stop and start and do not have the skills.
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
Have no skills and they will happen.
If we committed £1bn/year to building High Speed Rail for the next 50 years and £500m a year to electrify the railway, until it is done, we would develop huge skills and very efficient teams.
We don't, we turn the tap on and off randomly.
The same applies to literally anything.
agreed
Which may explain the rise of China and their centuary plan
Maybe our politicians are shit now because they aren’t in politics for decades honing their skills anymore
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
Compulsory purchase of land that will never be used.
Ridiculous route plan out of London, over Water Park near Tamworth many more.
Route could have run right alongside M40 from north of London to M 42 junction.
Massive scale corruption, local myth is that 80% of the materials that were delivered went our back door to other produces especially cement
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
It suggests we stop and start and do not have the skills.
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
Have no skills and they will happen.
It’s not so much having no skills as the cult of The Generalist.
When the MoD binned the ammunition buying unit, their successors proudly bought the cheapest ammunition they could find. I asked a chap who worked at the Cabinet Office - he was indignant, giving me a whole soliloquy on duty of care, best practise etc. And finished with - “Do you think that the ammunition for the British Army should be bought by a bunch of gun nuts?”
I would prefer people the people buying ammunition to actually care more about the people firing the ammunition than the price of it
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
Compulsory purchase of land that will never be used.
Ridiculous route plan out of London, over Water Park near Tamworth many more.
Route could have run right alongside M40 from north of London to M 42 junction.
Massive scale corruption, local myth is that 80% of the materials that were delivered went our back door to other produces especially cement
Working in construction; that seems unlikely to me. Much more likely to be incompetence
On a completely unrelated, I've been glancing at the T20 competition in Africa.
One or two rather one sided matches. Mali were bowled out for 24 allowing Botswana to win by 10 wickets with one N. Master taking six wickets for two runs for the Botswanans.
That was however as nothing compared to the match between Rwanda and the Ivory Coast. The former piled up 288 for two in their 20 overs with one Hamza Khan scoring 164 not out including fifteen sixes and nine fours.
Facing such a big task, you might have expected the Ivory Coast to struggle and indeed they did to 17. Yes, 17 all out recovering from the depths of 11 for 8. Issouf top scored with five while Ibrahim chipped in four.
Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.
Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
It is, and she will always have that. It’s such a shame as when she broke through it looked like she could be an all time great, but I don’t think she has enough grit in here. Murray made the most of what he had, worked himself doubly hard in order to try to be near the level of the big three. I see little evidence that Raducanu has the same level of drive. That and her inability to stick with a coach sends a message.
She took her chance when it came. She didn't choose who she had to play against. She added enormously to the gaiety of nations. She won one more major than me and one more than Tim Henman. She is the 37th best woman player in the world out of a female population of four billion. Give her a break.
Even if she never wins another match, she won as many grand slams as any female British singles player in the open era except Virginia Wade. And more than any man other than Andy Murray.
She got exceptional talent
She can't match the best for power
She's been unlucky with injures mainly due to lacking core strength
She won't be the last teenage prodigy that never kicks on, ie she might be the next who emerges from the wilderness with physical maturity.
My faith has been partially restored by the Twitter thing with the plumber proving to be a big nothing. It means perhaps they have picked a fairly decent candidate after all, not a walking hand grenade.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
Compulsory purchase of land that will never be used.
Ridiculous route plan out of London, over Water Park near Tamworth many more.
Route could have run right alongside M40 from north of London to M 42 junction.
Massive scale corruption, local myth is that 80% of the materials that were delivered went our back door to other produces especially cement
“Local myth” is an even less reliable source of information than social media.
One of the frustration of massively overbudget projects caused by red tape is superficial defences are used which make the delays and cost overruns somehow a positive, but implying (or stating) it is necessary to ensure top quality, even when that quality or protection is way more than is reasonably necessary for vital strategic interests).
In the case of the Bat Tunnel, the bit that nearly everyone missed is…
The chap in charge of it said that the spec was that not a single bat could be harmed.
This is evidence of ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance, because such absolutes are never used in real world engineering - you talk in terms of probabilities. Stupid because the Bat Tunnel as designed couldn’t guarantee that no bats would be harmed.
It is clear that the spec was created by someone who had not even amateur knowledge of engineering or requirements.
This is a U.K. pattern - see the farcical attempts at social engineering in requirement for workforce makeup on the SMR project.
Every village idiot in the system wants to stick their pet ideas in. Despite not having the expertise.
Hold on. Hold on! Are you trying to say that being a 'professional manager' maybe even with an MBA doesn't mean you can just manage anything at all when you're drafted in?
If so, I hold the evidence of the massive success of British Management in both the private and public sectors over the past 50 years or so against you. See?
...
oh.
People are promoted until they are incompetent klaxon
Hang on - I got a promotion the other year. And I've... filled in various spreadsheets. Written a report literally no-one read. It was a fairly decent report too. So hopefully I've got another rung or so to go before I write a terrible report that no-one reads.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
The line that you are highlighting as an example was opened in 2017, before these species regulations had come in.
That said, I am sure that the French do have a far less toxic relationship with EU law than we do, including patriotically ignoring large swathes of it, and probably with agencies that look at things in the round, rather than single issue quangos that can hold up vitally important national projects due to very minor habitat issues.
However, you have not made any practical proposals as to how we can get there without removing the laws. If observing a law is not working, why can we not replace that law with one that will work?
The French built post war in straight lines, roads and rail.
They learnt that from the Germans.
We had great straight line roads built by the Romans.
Sadly we love a curve, a bend, a bloody roundabout.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
The line that you are highlighting as an example was opened in 2017, before these species regulations had come in.
That said, I am sure that the French do have a far less toxic relationship with EU law than we do, including patriotically ignoring large swathes of it, and probably with agencies that look at things in the round, rather than single issue quangos that can hold up vitally important national projects due to very minor habitat issues.
However, you have not made any practical proposals as to how we can get there without removing the laws. If observing a law is not working, why can we not replace that law with one that will work?
I remember an old Jonathan Meades documentary where he suggested the reason French food was still more local and better quality was that the regulators and jobsworths were themselves consumers of the nice food. So just ignored all the EU regulations that would have made it terrible, if uniform.
I sometime wonder if that applies to people either sat on their arse in W1, or at a push, being driven to a site to 'oversee' work done. Never getting in a train themselves.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.
It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?
If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
I see the value in some quangos, but we probably don't need as many as we have, and politicians need to push back on the idea it is not proper for them to weigh in directly on some things.
I would generally support that, even if I might not like some of the choices, but I don't think the general public does. However, whilst there would be a short term hit from them pushing back on such things, I think the public would actually respond longer term to what would once again seem normal, rather than politicians playing into self-hating cynicism about governance.
I think it's about explaining to the public why a quango operating with no ministerial oversight is bad news. We all like the phrase 'independent of Government' because it makes an organisation sound impartial and unsullied by headline-grabbing, but it actually means 'unaccountable' - no need to respond to the electorate's wishes or account for their actions to ministers. And worst of all, no need to consider the wider implications when applying their powers.
If we had debates on the unaccountability of the Bank of England and the unaccountability of the Sentencing Council, rather than the 'independence' of these organisations, it might put a more realistic perspective on things.
They're not unaccountable because the government sets their remit and appoints their leaders.
The advantage is to give them a set of instructions and then let them get on with it without a minister micromanaging. Ministerial micromanagement - to add the bloody expensive Cheryl Gillian tunnels - is one of the reasons HS2 became so expensive.
Then they're not independent. Independence and unaccountability are two ways of expressing the same concept.
At any rate, that isn't really true. The Bank of England's remit on inflation has not been changed by ministers since it was established, Ministers don't appint the MPC, and an incoming Chancellor sacking the Governor and appointing a new one would be widely condemned. Meanwhile, the Bank of England is one of the worst performing agencies in the whole world. Yet the Governor remains and they sail on untroubled.
The point about ministers is not that they're better at doing things (though they could hardly be worse), but that they are accountable to the electorate if it goes wrong.
Further to this, the other good thing about Ministers is that they have to consider everything in the round. Natural England makes decisions which have massive economical and social impacts, but their only responsibility is to the bats. Single issue quangos weilding enormous power outside of democratic accountability is very bad news.
Mrs Flatlander was the English Nature (as it was then) regional bat phone. She got many many calls, always prefixed with - "I've got this baaat..." The required advice was always by necessity expensive (unless it was just one flying round someone's house).
She is as eco-warrior as they come (ie, not a Green) but she thought it ridiculous at the time, and still does. Bats and newts have always been a sub-industry out of all proportion to their ecological value.
Of course, the dodgier developers did not see a bat, no sir.
In the case of HS2, the developer could not play the "no bats here" game, but just think how much habitat restoration £100m could have done. The whole thing was an utter nonsense.
I do still maintain 100% tunnel would have been cheaper, though.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
This is missing the point. The legislation says that threatened species must be protected. If we didn't have EU laws saying this, we'd very likely have our own (British voters are quite pro-wildlife, on the whole, and one could imagine such legislation being passed by any of the governments in my adult memory, viz. the last 30 or so years).
It is technically correct to say that if we did not have any laws then there would no longer be a problem, but it's also rather fatuous. The problem is not that there was a law, but in how that law was applied. This is a particular problem with English law and legal norms, and the legal norms of other common law countries. There's a very good account of it here: https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-problem-factory-preemptive-risk-aversion-in-infrastructure-planning-and-the-role-of-professional-services/ or you could read Dan Wang's recent book contrasting the legalistic approach of the United States with the technocratic approach of China (notably the US also can't build high-speed rail despite never having been members of the EU).
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
It suggests we stop and start and do not have the skills.
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
Have no skills and they will happen.
Being realistic, once we've built the modern HS version of the East Coast mainline, West Coast mainline and a couple of East-West links at various points, we're not going to have any further need to build HS rail, probably ever.
Trying to have a HS rail pipeline in a country this small is a pretty futile cause.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
The line that you are highlighting as an example was opened in 2017, before these species regulations had come in.
That said, I am sure that the French do have a far less toxic relationship with EU law than we do, including patriotically ignoring large swathes of it, and probably with agencies that look at things in the round, rather than single issue quangos that can hold up vitally important national projects due to very minor habitat issues.
However, you have not made any practical proposals as to how we can get there without removing the laws. If observing a law is not working, why can we not replace that law with one that will work?
I'm saying we do the same as Spain, Italy, Poland and every other country, we deal with the EU in the same manner.
None of them have bat tunnel issues, none of them have construction costs at £1bn / mile, yet we do outside the EU.
If 27 other countries can do it, so can the UK.
The standard answer to this is that being a law-abiding country is more important to us, for example to our financial industry. Not sure how true it actually is, but it's the reason often given.
Here's a paper arguing that it might be common law....
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
The line that you are highlighting as an example was opened in 2017, before these species regulations had come in.
That said, I am sure that the French do have a far less toxic relationship with EU law than we do, including patriotically ignoring large swathes of it, and probably with agencies that look at things in the round, rather than single issue quangos that can hold up vitally important national projects due to very minor habitat issues.
However, you have not made any practical proposals as to how we can get there without removing the laws. If observing a law is not working, why can we not replace that law with one that will work?
I'm saying we do the same as Spain, Italy, Poland and every other country, we deal with the EU in the same manner.
None of them have bat tunnel issues, none of them have construction costs at £1bn / mile, yet we do outside the EU.
If 27 other countries can do it, so can the UK.
The standard answer to this is that being a law-abiding country is more important to us, for example to our financial industry. Not sure how true it actually is, but it's the reason often given.
Here's a paper arguing that it might be common law....
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
These days, Germany is having a lot of the same issues as the UK with building stuff. The rate of high speed rail, particularly actually making the rolling stock, is absolutely glacial compared to China. China have taken the car production model, modernised it, and applied it to train production.
Indeed, but not remotely EU related, more the Merkel years saw very low capex investment in the countries infrastructure.
If you want us to become more efficient and effictive at spending money you have a constant, reliable, guarenteed long term stream of cash, do not turn it on and off.
HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.
In 10 years we will, we should already be planning what to do next, making use of those skills to do it more effectively and miles cheaper.
Nothing wahtsoever to do with the EU.
HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.
Well you're correct about that.
But I don't remember any of the HS2 cheerleaders saying that 10, 15, 20 years ago.
No, they wanted the biggest, fastest, most advanced and most expensive system and they wanted it immediately.
“US and Iran agree in principle to a deal, then disagree on every single clause.” a European official speaking to Faytuks Network says
Mainly from the US side, partly due to Israel obvs
‘ It is also important to acknowledge that there are people whose entire careers depend on the continuation of the confrontation with Iran.
Admitting that this strategy has failed would inevitably force a reckoning, not only with the collapse of a long-held policy concept, but also with the fact that their own professional future may suddenly become uncertain.
That is why many of them will continue arguing that “just a little more pressure” would have worked; that there is always one more idea to topple the regime; that Iran is supposedly on the verge of economic collapse; that its oil infrastructure is about to fail; that one more strike, one more round of sanctions, one more covert campaign will finally break the system.
But these arguments avoid the central lesson that should already be obvious: there is no purely kinetic solution to the problem called Iran.’
The US and Israel will not win. Whether they realise it now or in twenty years
Trump chose to alienate all his allies and play nice with Iran's backers in Russia and China.
Could there be a renewed effort if the re-routing of oil makes Hormuz redundant and once Russian oil is back fully on the market?
The Strait of Hormuz won't be made redundant and as we have seen in the SMO, pipelines and refineries are vulnerable to attack if it does kick off again.
For long term peace, the problem remains that one hothead with a missile or even a drone aimed at Tel Aviv or Tehran can ignite another round of retaliation and escalation and the region is not lacking for hotheads.
I feel like this bat thing is where Swiss-style democracy works well. You could have a referendum on the discrete issue as to whether to disapply that legislation to infrastructure projects.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
Compulsory purchase of land that will never be used.
Ridiculous route plan out of London, over Water Park near Tamworth many more.
Route could have run right alongside M40 from north of London to M 42 junction.
Massive scale corruption, local myth is that 80% of the materials that were delivered went our back door to other produces especially cement
Working in construction; that seems unlikely to me. Much more likely to be incompetence
I'd supprised if it's 80% loss, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was 25%. I used to do quite a bit with a large civils outfit that was contracted to one of the water companies (one that's generally considered at the better end of the privatised water system too). The corruption all the way down was pretty epic - everything from lads on site stealing copper cables for scrap through to the senior management getting brown envelopes from subcontractors in return for winning overpriced contacts. They eventually went bust (because literally everyone was on the take), got sold lock stop and barrel to one of their rivals, and as far as I know the same people are still there, doing the same things.
One lad (site manager level) has apparently been done recently - apparently he was rumbled after selling around £65k worth of new tools he'd ordered to his sites on Facebook Marketplace in less than 12 months!
A big part of the problem is cost plus contracts, where the subcontractor is paid a fixed margin over their costs. Strangely, this seems to produce zero incentive to reduce any sort of loss or wastage, as the more you waste, the bigger your margin payment!
Nigel Farage has accused Elon Musk of splitting the right wing vote in the Makerfield by-election by supporting Restore Britain
“This is a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea”
I'd have thought it was pretty obvious what Rupert Lowe was trying to achieve- the sort of thing that couldn't happen to a nicer man than Nigel.
It's also pretty obvious what Elon Musk is trying to achieve here- boost the most right-wing option on the menu.
Lowe is the latest in a long line of people Farage has fallen out with and who have big egos and so start their own party. What's curious is why Musk or others have alighted on Lowe rather than any of the other options there has been.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
It suggests we stop and start and do not have the skills.
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
Have no skills and they will happen.
Being realistic, once we've built the modern HS version of the East Coast mainline, West Coast mainline and a couple of East-West links at various points, we're not going to have any further need to build HS rail, probably ever.
Trying to have a HS rail pipeline in a country this small is a pretty futile cause.
Replacement ECML, wcml, NPR and a couple of routes from Birmingham south and that’s all we need
But then we have 5000 lines of railway lines where electrification makes sense and a large number of metro lines for our other cities
Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.
Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
It is, and she will always have that. It’s such a shame as when she broke through it looked like she could be an all time great, but I don’t think she has enough grit in here. Murray made the most of what he had, worked himself doubly hard in order to try to be near the level of the big three. I see little evidence that Raducanu has the same level of drive. That and her inability to stick with a coach sends a message.
Raducanu's problem is her body is made of glass, perhaps exacerbated by each new coach of the month straining a different muscle. Almost every tournament sees a fresh injury. She is like any number of next Paul Gascoignes who tear their ACLs or ankles in their first season and are never heard from again.
ETA my mate's boy's history (iirc) teacher played the early rounds at Wimbledon one year.
One of the frustration of massively overbudget projects caused by red tape is superficial defences are used which make the delays and cost overruns somehow a positive, but implying (or stating) it is necessary to ensure top quality, even when that quality or protection is way more than is reasonably necessary for vital strategic interests).
In the case of the Bat Tunnel, the bit that nearly everyone missed is…
The chap in charge of it said that the spec was that not a single bat could be harmed.
This is evidence of ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance, because such absolutes are never used in real world engineering - you talk in terms of probabilities. Stupid because the Bat Tunnel as designed couldn’t guarantee that no bats would be harmed.
It is clear that the spec was created by someone who had not even amateur knowledge of engineering or requirements.
This is a U.K. pattern - see the farcical attempts at social engineering in requirement for workforce makeup on the SMR project.
Every village idiot in the system wants to stick their pet ideas in. Despite not having the expertise.
Hold on. Hold on! Are you trying to say that being a 'professional manager' maybe even with an MBA doesn't mean you can just manage anything at all when you're drafted in?
If so, I hold the evidence of the massive success of British Management in both the private and public sectors over the past 50 years or so against you. See?
...
oh.
People are promoted until they are incompetent klaxon
Hang on - I got a promotion the other year. And I've... filled in various spreadsheets. Written a report literally no-one read. It was a fairly decent report too. So hopefully I've got another rung or so to go before I write a terrible report that no-one reads.
Hurrah!
I've had two people immediately above me have their posts deleted in recent years, so even were I qualified (I'm not), I would fear going up a level.
Nigel Farage has accused Elon Musk of splitting the right wing vote in the Makerfield by-election by supporting Restore Britain
“This is a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea”
I'd have thought it was pretty obvious what Rupert Lowe was trying to achieve- the sort of thing that couldn't happen to a nicer man than Nigel.
It's also pretty obvious what Elon Musk is trying to achieve here- boost the most right-wing option on the menu.
Lowe is the latest in a long line of people Farage has fallen out with and who have big egos and so start their own party. What's curious is why Musk or others have alighted on Lowe rather than any of the other options there has been.
Unfortunately I think its because Farage isnt extreme enough for Musk...
Nigel Farage has accused Elon Musk of splitting the right wing vote in the Makerfield by-election by supporting Restore Britain
“This is a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea”
I'd have thought it was pretty obvious what Rupert Lowe was trying to achieve- the sort of thing that couldn't happen to a nicer man than Nigel.
It's also pretty obvious what Elon Musk is trying to achieve here- boost the most right-wing option on the menu.
Lowe is the latest in a long line of people Farage has fallen out with and who have big egos and so start their own party. What's curious is why Musk or others have alighted on Lowe rather than any of the other options there has been.
Unfortunately I think its because Farage isnt extreme enough for Musk...
I don't like Farage, but he's mostly mainstream. It's not surprising some fringe figures dislike the dropping of the facade and just becoming the new Tory Party (which they do, rather laughably, send out people who were Tories 5 minutes ago to deny).
Nigel Farage has accused Elon Musk of splitting the right wing vote in the Makerfield by-election by supporting Restore Britain
“This is a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea”
I'd have thought it was pretty obvious what Rupert Lowe was trying to achieve- the sort of thing that couldn't happen to a nicer man than Nigel.
It's also pretty obvious what Elon Musk is trying to achieve here- boost the most right-wing option on the menu.
Lowe is the latest in a long line of people Farage has fallen out with and who have big egos and so start their own party. What's curious is why Musk or others have alighted on Lowe rather than any of the other options there has been.
Timing, I think. Lowe happened to fall out with Farage around the same time as Musk did, and for similar reasons, so Musk lighted on him as the tool with which to try and punish Farage.
One of the interesting features of Makerfield will be that it definitively answers the question of "will Reform significantly squeeze Restore in seats where Reform are serious contenders".
My working assumption is that they will, and therefore Farage has little need to shore up his right flank, however if Restore does get a strong showing, expect Nigel to tack right again in response.
Nigel Farage has accused Elon Musk of splitting the right wing vote in the Makerfield by-election by supporting Restore Britain
“This is a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea”
I'd have thought it was pretty obvious what Rupert Lowe was trying to achieve- the sort of thing that couldn't happen to a nicer man than Nigel.
It's also pretty obvious what Elon Musk is trying to achieve here- boost the most right-wing option on the menu.
Lowe is the latest in a long line of people Farage has fallen out with and who have big egos and so start their own party. What's curious is why Musk or others have alighted on Lowe rather than any of the other options there has been.
Timing, I think. Lowe happened to fall out with Farage around the same time as Musk did, and for similar reasons, so Musk lighted on him as the tool with which to try and punish Farage.
One of the interesting features of Makerfield will be that it definitively answers the question of "will Reform significantly squeeze Restore in seats where Reform are serious contenders".
My working assumption is that they will, and therefore Farage has little need to shore up his right flank, however if Restore does get a strong showing, expect Nigel to tack right again in response.
What have Restore got to squeeze? Outside Great Yarmouth they're not even in sight of Coubt Binface, who has more sensible policies to be fair.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
It suggests we stop and start and do not have the skills.
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
Have no skills and they will happen.
Being realistic, once we've built the modern HS version of the East Coast mainline, West Coast mainline and a couple of East-West links at various points, we're not going to have any further need to build HS rail, probably ever.
Trying to have a HS rail pipeline in a country this small is a pretty futile cause.
Replacement ECML, wcml, NPR and a couple of routes from Birmingham south and that’s all we need
But then we have 5000 lines of railway lines where electrification makes sense and a large number of metro lines for our other cities
You wouldn't choose to run the ECML to by pass most major cities if you designed from scratch, but it has allowed for good line speeds and it is successful. Newcastle is the first city outside of London you would prioritising pointing a railway towards on the mainline , it bypassing to the east at least the 3 of the largest cities on the way and sulkily diverting to the 4th on a terminating branch line.
We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.
No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.
You fuckers aren't going to win.
But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?
The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.
Not mine.
Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.
The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
From the header,
The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)
In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.
Then the questions become:
Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?
If so, what is that threshold?
If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?
If so, when?
If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
Other questions:
Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?
Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?
How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?
Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.
Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.
If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.
There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.
Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?
I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed On them, either.
The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.
Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.
I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.
You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.
The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.
How is it 'a false enemy' when a £100mn bat tunnel was built specifically to comply with an EU law, and your point (it seems) is just that 'we should just ignore that law then' without saying how that would actually work?
Perhaps there'd have got away with it if they called it a bat cave.
Prehaps you adapt to the EU as every other country has.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
Properly compared, HS2 is expensive. But simplistic comparisons don't help.
Point being, it is absolutely not the EU causing it to be expensive to build infrastructure in the UK 10 years after Brexit.
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
HOW CAN YOU SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EU WHEN WE BUILT A BAT TUNNEL TO COMPLY WITH RETAINED EU SPECIES LEGISLATION, SANCTIONED BY THE BODY SET UP TO ENFORCE THAT LEGISLATION.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
It's the choice of the UK to build the bat tunnel.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
The Bat Tunnel is evidence of incompetence in specifying things. The specification for it was manifestly absurd.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
Compulsory purchase of land that will never be used.
Ridiculous route plan out of London, over Water Park near Tamworth many more.
Route could have run right alongside M40 from north of London to M 42 junction.
Massive scale corruption, local myth is that 80% of the materials that were delivered went our back door to other produces especially cement
Working in construction; that seems unlikely to me. Much more likely to be incompetence
I'd supprised if it's 80% loss, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was 25%. I used to do quite a bit with a large civils outfit that was contracted to one of the water companies (one that's generally considered at the better end of the privatised water system too). The corruption all the way down was pretty epic - everything from lads on site stealing copper cables for scrap through to the senior management getting brown envelopes from subcontractors in return for winning overpriced contacts. They eventually went bust (because literally everyone was on the take), got sold lock stop and barrel to one of their rivals, and as far as I know the same people are still there, doing the same things.
One lad (site manager level) has apparently been done recently - apparently he was rumbled after selling around £65k worth of new tools he'd ordered to his sites on Facebook Marketplace in less than 12 months!
A big part of the problem is cost plus contracts, where the subcontractor is paid a fixed margin over their costs. Strangely, this seems to produce zero incentive to reduce any sort of loss or wastage, as the more you waste, the bigger your margin payment!
Cost plus contracts aren’t truly cost plus. Negligent wastage would be a disallowed cost if they are managed properly (which I acknowledge they probably are not).
Nigel Farage has accused Elon Musk of splitting the right wing vote in the Makerfield by-election by supporting Restore Britain
“This is a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea”
I'd have thought it was pretty obvious what Rupert Lowe was trying to achieve- the sort of thing that couldn't happen to a nicer man than Nigel.
It's also pretty obvious what Elon Musk is trying to achieve here- boost the most right-wing option on the menu.
Lowe is the latest in a long line of people Farage has fallen out with and who have big egos and so start their own party. What's curious is why Musk or others have alighted on Lowe rather than any of the other options there has been.
Timing, I think. Lowe happened to fall out with Farage around the same time as Musk did, and for similar reasons, so Musk lighted on him as the tool with which to try and punish Farage.
One of the interesting features of Makerfield will be that it definitively answers the question of "will Reform significantly squeeze Restore in seats where Reform are serious contenders".
My working assumption is that they will, and therefore Farage has little need to shore up his right flank, however if Restore does get a strong showing, expect Nigel to tack right again in response.
What have Restore got to squeeze? Outside Great Yarmouth they're not even in sight of Coubt Binface, who has more sensible policies to be fair.
Latest polls gives them 7% in Makerfield. If that gets squeezed down to 2-3% Nigel is probably home and dry, of it isn't he's probably got a significant problem.
Nigel Farage has accused Elon Musk of splitting the right wing vote in the Makerfield by-election by supporting Restore Britain
“This is a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea”
I'd have thought it was pretty obvious what Rupert Lowe was trying to achieve- the sort of thing that couldn't happen to a nicer man than Nigel.
It's also pretty obvious what Elon Musk is trying to achieve here- boost the most right-wing option on the menu.
Lowe is the latest in a long line of people Farage has fallen out with and who have big egos and so start their own party. What's curious is why Musk or others have alighted on Lowe rather than any of the other options there has been.
Unfortunately I think its because Farage isnt extreme enough for Musk...
Nigel Farage has accused Elon Musk of splitting the right wing vote in the Makerfield by-election by supporting Restore Britain
“This is a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea”
I'd have thought it was pretty obvious what Rupert Lowe was trying to achieve- the sort of thing that couldn't happen to a nicer man than Nigel.
It's also pretty obvious what Elon Musk is trying to achieve here- boost the most right-wing option on the menu.
Lowe is the latest in a long line of people Farage has fallen out with and who have big egos and so start their own party. What's curious is why Musk or others have alighted on Lowe rather than any of the other options there has been.
Timing, I think. Lowe happened to fall out with Farage around the same time as Musk did, and for similar reasons, so Musk lighted on him as the tool with which to try and punish Farage.
One of the interesting features of Makerfield will be that it definitively answers the question of "will Reform significantly squeeze Restore in seats where Reform are serious contenders".
My working assumption is that they will, and therefore Farage has little need to shore up his right flank, however if Restore does get a strong showing, expect Nigel to tack right again in response.
If Burnham edges a win because of Restore, the feuding on the right will be spectacular.
Nigel Farage has accused Elon Musk of splitting the right wing vote in the Makerfield by-election by supporting Restore Britain
“This is a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea”
I'd have thought it was pretty obvious what Rupert Lowe was trying to achieve- the sort of thing that couldn't happen to a nicer man than Nigel.
It's also pretty obvious what Elon Musk is trying to achieve here- boost the most right-wing option on the menu.
Lowe is the latest in a long line of people Farage has fallen out with and who have big egos and so start their own party. What's curious is why Musk or others have alighted on Lowe rather than any of the other options there has been.
Timing, I think. Lowe happened to fall out with Farage around the same time as Musk did, and for similar reasons, so Musk lighted on him as the tool with which to try and punish Farage.
One of the interesting features of Makerfield will be that it definitively answers the question of "will Reform significantly squeeze Restore in seats where Reform are serious contenders".
My working assumption is that they will, and therefore Farage has little need to shore up his right flank, however if Restore does get a strong showing, expect Nigel to tack right again in response.
If Burnham edges a win because of Restore, the feuding on the right will be spectacular.
Comments
‘ It is also important to acknowledge that there are people whose entire careers depend on the continuation of the confrontation with Iran.
Admitting that this strategy has failed would inevitably force a reckoning, not only with the collapse of a long-held policy concept, but also with the fact that their own professional future may suddenly become uncertain.
That is why many of them will continue arguing that “just a little more pressure” would have worked; that there is always one more idea to topple the regime; that Iran is supposedly on the verge of economic collapse; that its oil infrastructure is about to fail; that one more strike, one more round of sanctions, one more covert campaign will finally break the system.
But these arguments avoid the central lesson that should already be obvious: there is no purely kinetic solution to the problem called Iran.’
The US and Israel will not win. Whether they realise it now or in twenty years
https://x.com/citrinowicz/status/2058594974774575252?s=61
LABOUR... TAX TAX AND MORE TAX
Could there be a renewed effort if the re-routing of oil makes Hormuz redundant and once Russian oil is back fully on the market?
https://x.com/rapidresponse47/status/2058613388154925189
If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon. Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is.
It isn't even fully negotiated yet. So don't listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about. Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don't make bad deals! President DJT
Probably a sensible move on his part in order to move on. So long as fighting does not break out again before the midterms or (hopefully) the next presidential election, no one ever need care about the details.
Why ?
I would generally support that, even if I might not like some of the choices, but I don't think the general public does. However, whilst there would be a short term hit from them pushing back on such things, I think the public would actually respond longer term to what would once again seem normal, rather than politicians playing into self-hating cynicism about governance.
Israel could build the ‘Ben Gurion canal’.
Other nations pipelines east to west.
The EU probably makes such schemes cheaper, through standardisation, they certainly don't make them more expensive.
Within the EU.
New high speed rail cost - €8.5bn
Yet the EU is to blame for the UK having overblown infrastructure costs.
You're having a laugh.
Bordeaux to Paris is 365miles
it cost €8.5bn
In the EU
If we had debates on the unaccountability of the Bank of England and the unaccountability of the Sentencing Council, rather than the 'independence' of these organisations, it might put a more realistic perspective on things.
The advantage is to give them a set of instructions and then let them get on with it without a minister micromanaging. Ministerial micromanagement - to add the bloody expensive Cheryl Gillian tunnels - is one of the reasons HS2 became so expensive.
The point about political micromanagement is well made, but it's clearly not being countered by overall ministerial direction as it is supposed to in setting the remit, so it's still also the case that government is too hands off, even as it can make things worse with inconsistent, individual interventions.
Here's a non-simplistic one:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fb7de78e90e077ee0856f00/high-speed-rail-international-benchmarking-study-document.pdf
France has a lot of empty flat space between Paris and Bordeaux.
Evan Edinger just put out a video about obtaining a fresh apple in USA cities, and the weird explanations given for it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDyPHGZCmNE
The reasons are complex, but not in any way caused by the EU given how many countries in the EU build far cheaper than we do.
That said, I am sure that the French do have a far less toxic relationship with EU law than we do, including patriotically ignoring large swathes of it, and probably with agencies that look at things in the round, rather than single issue quangos that can hold up vitally important national projects due to very minor habitat issues.
However, you have not made any practical proposals as to how we can get there without removing the laws. If observing a law is not working, why can we not replace that law with one that will work?
None of them have bat tunnel issues, none of them have construction costs at £1bn / mile, yet we do outside the EU.
If 27 other countries can do it, so can the UK.
Forgive me for shouting but FFS. You can say that we have made it worse, or we're gold-plating it, but to say it is 'not in any way caused' by it is a simple flat out lie in the face of the plain facts.
Far far harder than HS2.
In the EU.
With current EU laws.
They can do it.
The chap in charge of it said that the spec was that not a single bat could be harmed.
This is evidence of ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance, because such absolutes are never used in real world engineering - you talk in terms of probabilities. Stupid because the Bat Tunnel as designed couldn’t guarantee that no bats would be harmed.
It is clear that the spec was created by someone who had not even amateur knowledge of engineering or requirements.
This is a U.K. pattern - see the farcical attempts at social engineering in requirement for workforce makeup on the SMR project.
Every village idiot in the system wants to stick their pet ideas in. Despite not having the expertise.
The UK had left the EU.
No other EU country would have built the tunnel.
That tunnel does not get close to explaining the difference between the costs of UK v EU for rail construction.
And the issue is less whether these things are running perfectly, but how do you fix them when they go wrong? (Something always goes wrong).
I think it would be fair to say that sometimes ministers have seen quangos as a useful way to shrug off public anger when things go wrong, which means they're less willing to intervene to assume responsibility. That is an argument in favour of making ministers more directly responsible, rather than having quangos, but I tend to think that good leaders are good at delegating, and that quangos can be a good way to delegate.
But lets blame the forgeiners
But still, far harder and not negatively affected by EU law to make more expensive
Here's a paper arguing that it might be common law....
https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Problem-Factory-Preemptive-risk-aversion-in-infrastructure-planning-and-the-role-of-professional-services.pdf
But that is a local decision, not an EU decision.
Against the LDs, the Conservatives are currently in retreat but that can all change and past Conservative majorities (1979, 2015) have been built on the corpses of Liberal/Lib Dem MPs.
The question is whether the Conservatives can hold off Reform and pick up seats from Labour and someone else argued the range could be 90-150 and I'd go along with that for now but with the caveat there's plenty of time for things to change.
The current fragmentation works really well for parties who can concentrate their strength.
This is why Bat Tunnels don’t happen in other countries. They don’t draw absurd conclusions from the same laws.
It strongly suggests that one part of the problem is incompetent managers demanding things be out in the spec because it means they have Done Something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URdudEB_oRY
Build high speed railways for decades and these 'mistakes' do not happen.
Have no skills and they will happen.
At any rate, that isn't really true. The Bank of England's remit on inflation has not been changed by ministers since it was established, Ministers don't appint the MPC, and an incoming Chancellor sacking the Governor and appointing a new one would be widely condemned. Meanwhile, the Bank of England is one of the worst performing agencies in the whole world. Yet the Governor remains and they sail on untroubled.
The point about ministers is not that they're better at doing things (though they could hardly be worse), but that they are accountable to the electorate if it goes wrong.
We don't, we turn the tap on and off randomly.
If so, I hold the evidence of the massive success of British Management in both the private and public sectors over the past 50 years or so against you. See?
...
oh.
Which may explain the rise of China and their centuary plan
When the MoD binned the ammunition buying unit, their successors proudly bought the cheapest ammunition they could find. I asked a chap who worked at the Cabinet Office - he was indignant, giving me a whole soliloquy on duty of care, best practise etc. And finished with - “Do you think that the ammunition for the British Army should be bought by a bunch of gun nuts?”
Nigel Farage has accused Elon Musk of splitting the right wing vote in the Makerfield by-election by supporting Restore Britain
“This is a party that’s one man with a social media account. Quite what he’s trying to achieve, I have no idea”
Ridiculous route plan out of London, over Water Park near Tamworth many more.
Route could have run right alongside M40 from north of London to M 42 junction.
Massive scale corruption, local myth is that 80% of the materials that were delivered went our back door to other produces especially cement
One or two rather one sided matches. Mali were bowled out for 24 allowing Botswana to win by 10 wickets with one N. Master taking six wickets for two runs for the Botswanans.
That was however as nothing compared to the match between Rwanda and the Ivory Coast. The former piled up 288 for two in their 20 overs with one Hamza Khan scoring 164 not out including fifteen sixes and nine fours.
Facing such a big task, you might have expected the Ivory Coast to struggle and indeed they did to 17. Yes, 17 all out recovering from the depths of 11 for 8. Issouf top scored with five while Ibrahim chipped in four.
She can't match the best for power
She's been unlucky with injures mainly due to lacking core strength
She won't be the last teenage prodigy that never kicks on, ie she might be the next who emerges from the wilderness with physical maturity.
My faith has been partially restored by the Twitter thing with the plumber proving to be a big nothing. It means perhaps they have picked a fairly decent candidate after all, not a walking hand grenade.
It's also pretty obvious what Elon Musk is trying to achieve here- boost the most right-wing option on the menu.
Hurrah!
They learnt that from the Germans.
We had great straight line roads built by the Romans.
Sadly we love a curve, a bend, a bloody roundabout.
The Yanks build in straight lines.
Everybody gets lost in London
No body gets lost in New York.
I sometime wonder if that applies to people either sat on their arse in W1, or at a push, being driven to a site to 'oversee' work done. Never getting in a train themselves.
She is as eco-warrior as they come (ie, not a Green) but she thought it ridiculous at the time, and still does. Bats and newts have always been a sub-industry out of all proportion to their ecological value.
Of course, the dodgier developers did not see a bat, no sir.
In the case of HS2, the developer could not play the "no bats here" game, but just think how much habitat restoration £100m could have done. The whole thing was an utter nonsense.
I do still maintain 100% tunnel would have been cheaper, though.
It is technically correct to say that if we did not have any laws then there would no longer be a problem, but it's also rather fatuous. The problem is not that there was a law, but in how that law was applied. This is a particular problem with English law and legal norms, and the legal norms of other common law countries. There's a very good account of it here: https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-problem-factory-preemptive-risk-aversion-in-infrastructure-planning-and-the-role-of-professional-services/ or you could read Dan Wang's recent book contrasting the legalistic approach of the United States with the technocratic approach of China (notably the US also can't build high-speed rail despite never having been members of the EU).
If we want to see what a move in the right direction looks like, the nuclear regulatory review has some good points: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-regulatory-taskforce (though we can see that the problem factory is already marketing its latest line of products designed to counteract this: https://www.39essex.com/our-thinking/insights/going-nuclear-what-will-become-of-the-nuclear-regulatory-review/)
Trying to have a HS rail pipeline in a country this small is a pretty futile cause.
Well you're correct about that.
But I don't remember any of the HS2 cheerleaders saying that 10, 15, 20 years ago.
No, they wanted the biggest, fastest, most advanced and most expensive system and they wanted it immediately.
For long term peace, the problem remains that one hothead with a missile or even a drone aimed at Tel Aviv or Tehran can ignite another round of retaliation and escalation and the region is not lacking for hotheads.
I used to do quite a bit with a large civils outfit that was contracted to one of the water companies (one that's generally considered at the better end of the privatised water system too).
The corruption all the way down was pretty epic - everything from lads on site stealing copper cables for scrap through to the senior management getting brown envelopes from subcontractors in return for winning overpriced contacts. They eventually went bust (because literally everyone was on the take), got sold lock stop and barrel to one of their rivals, and as far as I know the same people are still there, doing the same things.
One lad (site manager level) has apparently been done recently - apparently he was rumbled after selling around £65k worth of new tools he'd ordered to his sites on Facebook Marketplace in less than 12 months!
A big part of the problem is cost plus contracts, where the subcontractor is paid a fixed margin over their costs. Strangely, this seems to produce zero incentive to reduce any sort of loss or wastage, as the more you waste, the bigger your margin payment!
But then we have 5000 lines of railway lines where electrification makes sense and a large number of metro lines for our other cities
ETA my mate's boy's history (iirc) teacher played the early rounds at Wimbledon one year.
I think Antonelli is getting a bit too feisty there. Very nearly wiped out both of them.
One of the interesting features of Makerfield will be that it definitively answers the question of "will Reform significantly squeeze Restore in seats where Reform are serious contenders".
My working assumption is that they will, and therefore Farage has little need to shore up his right flank, however if Restore does get a strong showing, expect Nigel to tack right again in response.
Does anyone seriously believe the Russians hacked him ?