Russia ‘jammed signals of RAF jet’ carrying defence secretary
John Healey was flying home after visiting British troops stationed in Estonia, which is seen as a likely target for an invasion
An RAF jet carrying the defence secretary was hit by an electronic warfare attack after flying near the Russian border, The Times can reveal.
John Healey was travelling home after visiting British soldiers stationed in southeast Estonia when the satellite signal on his government aircraft was knocked out.
Russia is believed to have been behind the jamming, which disabled the jet’s GPS for the entire three-hour flight back.
Laptops and smartphones could not connect to the internet and the pilots were forced to use “revisionary” inertial navigation systems to calculate their location. The interference also caused parts of the dashboard to malfunction in the cockpit of the Dassault Falcon 900LX aircraft, which is also used by the King.
Healey was flying on Thursday with political and military advisers, as well as a three-star lieutenant general, two photographers and a Times reporter.
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?
It doesn't occur to you that the contractor was only too happy to find an excuse to build a £100m bat tunnel, and the client's rep was too naive to object?
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?
It doesn't occur to you that the contractor was only too happy to find an excuse to build a £100m bat tunnel, and the client's rep was too naive to object?
It’s ok. In LuckyGuy’s world the Minister will PM all the projects themselves
🟢 EXCL: Senior Green Party figures have urged Zack Polanski to consider stepping aside for Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election if the Greater Manchester mayor commits to introducing proportional representation
Green councillors, activists and former party leaders have signed a joint statement warning that the party should approach the contest with “trepidation”
The letter, whose signatories include Jonathan Bartley, who led the party between 2016 and 2018, and Rupert Read, a former Green councillor and author, says that Burnham’s election presents a “unique opportunity” to secure reform
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.
Much of that 7% will be people thinking Restore are Reform.
And Restore have made a tactical mistake with their candidate Rebecca Shepherd - her name will appear lower down the ballot paper than Reform's Robert Kenyon.
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).
Negligent wasteage probably *should* be disallowed, but I don't think I've ever actually seen it happen in practice. Not least because there are often several layers of cost plus subcontracting going on, and only the firm right at the top of the pile has any interest whatsoever in holding costs down - everyone else just gets more in margin payments. And if the top of the pile is the government, it's pretty much guaranteed they'll mug up for the lot 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
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).
Negligent wasteage probably *should* be disallowed, but I don't think I've ever actually seen it happen in practice. Not least because there are often several layers of cost plus subcontracting going on, and only the firm right at the top of the pile has any interest whatsoever in holding costs down - everyone else just gets more in margin payments. And if the top of the pile is the government, it's pretty much guaranteed they'll mug up for the lot of it.
But that’s just a product of the Government QSes having a light touch. Just like when referees don’t enforce the rules players take the piss
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?
It doesn't occur to you that the contractor was only too happy to find an excuse to build a £100m bat tunnel, and the client's rep was too naive to object?
It’s ok. In LuckyGuy’s world the Minister will PM all the projects themselves
Surely at least part the trick is to heavily align incentives e.g. pay all through the system, down to small site manager level and cost control. Come in substantially under budget, ££ muchly. Spend 5x budget (or whatever HS2 is up to now), and congrats, you're now working for free.
You'd need to combine that with some fairly independent QC people, on a bonus based on successfully identifying corners being cut.
The best option of all is the simplest. Act of Parliament approving a route, squashing all planning/environmental stuff, setting agreed compensation ratios for the properties compulsorily purchased etc. Then simply offer a 50 year build and operate licence to the highest bidder - they get to build it at their expense, then get the revenue from it until a specified date. The sooner it's open, the sooner they start earning. The more it costs to build, the less profitable it is for the company in question. If no one bids, then we've successfully answered the question "is it worth building this thing anyway", and we should give the whole idea up.
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.
Damn it, like my Mali, Ivory Coast multiplier didn't come in.
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).
This gets to the root of the problem with EU legislation. It is continent wide, decided by concensus and generally fails to either serve the purpose it was designed for or to answer the issues at a national level or local issue. The 'one size fits all' model of EU reguation has been one of its greatest failures.
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.
Make absolutely no difference, as said many times rest of EU manage no problem. It is an English disease not a European one.
Comments
John Healey was flying home after visiting British troops stationed in Estonia, which is seen as a likely target for an invasion
An RAF jet carrying the defence secretary was hit by an electronic warfare attack after flying near the Russian border, The Times can reveal.
John Healey was travelling home after visiting British soldiers stationed in southeast Estonia when the satellite signal on his government aircraft was knocked out.
Russia is believed to have been behind the jamming, which disabled the jet’s GPS for the entire three-hour flight back.
Laptops and smartphones could not connect to the internet and the pilots were forced to use “revisionary” inertial navigation systems to calculate their location. The interference also caused parts of the dashboard to malfunction in the cockpit of the Dassault Falcon 900LX aircraft, which is also used by the King.
Healey was flying on Thursday with political and military advisers, as well as a three-star lieutenant general, two photographers and a Times reporter.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/russia-jams-signals-raf-jet-john-healey-kq0x5x27r
Daisy Eastlake
@daisyeastlake
🟢 EXCL: Senior Green Party figures have urged Zack Polanski to consider stepping aside for Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election if the Greater Manchester mayor commits to introducing proportional representation
Green councillors, activists and former party leaders have signed a joint statement warning that the party should approach the contest with “trepidation”
The letter, whose signatories include Jonathan Bartley, who led the party between 2016 and 2018, and Rupert Read, a former Green councillor and author, says that Burnham’s election presents a “unique opportunity” to secure reform
https://x.com/daisyeastlake/status/2058620897863348478
And Restore have made a tactical mistake with their candidate Rebecca Shepherd - her name will appear lower down the ballot paper than Reform's Robert Kenyon.
NEW THREAD
You'd need to combine that with some fairly independent QC people, on a bonus based on successfully identifying corners being cut.
The best option of all is the simplest. Act of Parliament approving a route, squashing all planning/environmental stuff, setting agreed compensation ratios for the properties compulsorily purchased etc. Then simply offer a 50 year build and operate licence to the highest bidder - they get to build it at their expense, then get the revenue from it until a specified date. The sooner it's open, the sooner they start earning. The more it costs to build, the less profitable it is for the company in question. If no one bids, then we've successfully answered the question "is it worth building this thing anyway", and we should give the whole idea up.
I don't know how England think they can win T20 matches if they don't manage to run fast between the wickets or hit sixes.
Which is to say, no chance of winning the World Cup they're hosting shortly.