By eck Mark...if you thought the responses were few and far between to cupofteagate I’m sure Uncle Tony will be piling the responses as we speak! 💩
Me? I was a remainer in every way....until Jacob Rees Mogg said the fish in our waters that we used to sell abroad ( as we as a nation don’t want to eat 80-90%) are much happier now...well
If I knew that then..well, Brexit all the way for me after such a considered response from the Mogster
It would appear that yours is a little dark and bitter.
On a serious note and this does worry me, you appear to be in a constant state of ire, railing at everything and finding no joy, hope or delight in anything at all.
You appear to spend much of your time focussing on so much negative news that you miss the beauty and splendour of all that we have to celebrate and enjoy and to what ends?
I was simply trying to lighten the mood with an ironic quip.
Oh and as for waste what about Milk lakes, butter mountains, farmers leaving fields fallow to create demand, sheep selling for pennies when lamb was £7 per lb,, fishing boats left to rot, steel works shut due to unfair competition laws, manufacturing outsourced and the billions of pounds we paid anually to help compensate said farmers, and other business.
The EU was always a club run for the benefit of an elite few, paid for by the masses and answerable to nobody but having power over all.
It is a self serving bed of corruption maintained by the unelected for the benefit of big business whilst all the time operating to a hidden agenda to subvert nations and manipulate policy.
It wont happen in my lifetime, but the EU will eventually fracture and disintegrate, it's inevitable.
Roman, Mongol, Byzantine, Ottoman, British, Soviet. All empires fall.
Now I am aware that this will probably result in pages of newspaper headlines and t.v. clips as you fashion a response and thats your right. But just understand that I've already read and heard them .
Have a great weekend.
Mark
I will respond, but I am just on my way out.
I laughed at this bit.
On a serious note and this does worry me, you appear to be in a constant state of ire, railing at everything and finding no joy, hope or delight in anything at all.
The below is a list of deadly serious, angry threads that I have started , or posted on in the last 2 days.
Gorilla Glue On Line Dating? Daily Cartoons. Extremely Dangerous Driver. We Dont Give A Sh.t What He Thinks Grave Insult. Giant Jock Snake Your Hands Show Off Your Eating Habits Killed His Chickens
Do I think we would be financially better off still in the EU? Yes. The European Economic Community (as it once was) has enormous benefits.
But European Union? Not so much.
We have (rightly or wrongly) democratically chosen to follow a different path. Will that have costs? Undoubtedly. But we need to make the best of it. And sometimes, just sometimes, we may get benefits from not being in the EU.
Boris Johnson warned abandoning Brexit fishing deal could spark brutal retaliation from EU
Liam Campling, Professor of International Business and Development at Queen Mary University warned of the potential consequences if the Brexit deal is not adhered to. During an interview with Express.co.uk, Professor Campling discussed the consequences of the UK shortening the five year fishing transition period agreed. He insisted this would be dangerous as it would allow the EU the opportunity to implement tariffs on fishing goods.
"Again, that would mean the EU would be entirely within its rights to introduce tariffs on EU imports of fish and fish products from the UK.
"We would potentially have more quota but we would have nowhere to sell it.
"That would be a huge blow to the average British fisherman."
Duped again: Irish unionists and the long, sorry history of Tory betrayal
In 1921, Sir Edward Carson, leader of the Irish unionists, uttered words anyone tempted to fall for the charms of English Tories should learn by heart. “What a fool I was. I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative party into power.”
The Liberal Democrats have been saying much the same for five years. Working-class voters in red wall constituencies will be saying much the same in five years’ time. Today’s puppets, however, are Carson’s heirs in the Democratic Unionist party. Couldn’t they see what would happen? Did they not read the polls that showed English Tories would rather accept a united Ireland and independent Scotland than give up on Brexit? Boris Johnson’s wives, mistresses and colleagues all learned he would rat on them in the end. What made East Belfast Protestants think they would be different? Johnson duly ratted on them and dealt Ulster unionism a historic and perhaps terminal blow by partitioning the United Kingdom with a border in the Irish Sea.
I am searching my bookshelves to find an example to compare with their bottomless stupidity. The Trojans and the horse: at least they thought the war was over. Napoleon and Moscow: at least he had grounds for thinking himself invincible. Their motives were comprehensible. The DUP’s reasons for first supporting Brexit, and then allying with the Tory right in wrecking Theresa May’s deal, which aimed to preserve the territorial integrity of the UK, are beyond ordinary comprehension. They lie in the irrational urge to destroy.
Johnson’s Conservative party of the early 21st century imitates Andrew Bonar Law’s Conservative party of the early 20th. Before the First World War, the Tories incited the army to mutiny rather than accept home rule for Ireland. They wanted to use the fury of the Ulster Protestants Carson led as a weapon against the Liberal government.
In the early 21st as in the early 20th century extreme nationalism worked at the ballot box for the Tories
As George Dangerfield wrote in his Strange Death of Liberal England, Tories became sick of caution and respectability. They no longer could bear to hold on to “that attitude of critical and grumbling respect for government”. They no more cared that rejecting home rule would lead to war in Ireland than today’s Tories care that Brexit will lead to dole queues, borders within the UK and the revival of Scottish nationalism.
“Move fast and break things” is the authentic slogan of the Conservative party then and now. Own the libs. Don’t be a cuck. Crush the saboteurs, the mutineers, the enemies of the people. To ask what will be left of the UK, whether there even will be a UK, when everything is broken is to miss the point spectacularly. In the early 21st as in the early 20th century extreme nationalism worked at the ballot box for the Tories because now, as then, the Nietzschean mood was the spirit of the age.
The DUP could not resist it. With Donald Trump rising in the US and Nigel Farage and Johnson rising in the UK, could they really be expected to be left behind muttering timid cliches about “being careful what you wish for”? The voters of Northern Ireland tried to warn the DUP by voting 56% to 44% to stay in the EU.
Everyone who understood international relations said that, if loyalists and Protestant fundamentalists imagined Brexit would lead to the restoration of the border with the Republic, the United States and the EU would soon put them straight. The only way to avoid a border within the UK was to agree to a soft Brexit. It was their last chance. And the DUP used the power it had in the hung 2017 parliament to rule it out.
How they loved the attention. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a proper English toff, or close enough to Belfast eyes, told them: “I won’t abandon the DUP because I think they are the guardians of the union of the United Kingdom” and they believed him. Sammy Wilson rolled around the radio studios praising Boris Johnson’s “shock tactics” without it ever occurring to him that Ulster unionists would end up being the most shocked of all.
They think of themselves as tough political operators. “This is a battle of who blinks first and we’ve cut off our eyelids,” the DUP declared in the Brexit negotiations. In truth, the Good Friday agreement had made them marks waiting to be conned. By guaranteeing the DUP and Sinn Fein would always be in control, power sharing in Northern Ireland had atrophied their political skills. They didn’t see the threat coming.
Related: The Guardian view on Northern Ireland and Brexit: stick with the protocol | Editorial
Carson cried out his despair in 1921 because he wanted the whole of Ireland to stay in the British empire. After the Easter uprising and the Irish war of independence, London was no longer prepared to fight to retain control of the south. The Tories were back in power and would stay in power pretty much continuously until 1945. They could safely dump Carson and his friends.
The DUP’s stupidity is truly bottomless because no Irish republican war forced them to embrace Brexit and partition the union. Democratic Unionists weren’t, like so many settlers of the British empire, abandoned by the Tory metropolis when the price of maintaining colonial rule grew too high. Rather, they egged Tory England on as it went berserk. They hope now that the EU’s brief threat to impose a vaccine border in Ireland will save them.
But there’s no way out. Now, as always, the choice is a soft Brexit or no Brexit, which they ruled out; a border on the island of Ireland, which the world will not accept; or a border in the Irish Sea, which cuts unionists off from the rest of the UK and forces them to integrate with the Republic and the EU.
Last month, Ian Paisley Jr pointed at Conservative MPs in the Commons and said: “What did we do to members on those benches over there to be screwed over by this protocol? Ask your hearts, every single one, what did we do?”
I’ll tell you what you did, Paisley, you betrayed the best interests of your cause and country by allowing yourself to become a puppet in the political game to keep the Conservative party in power.
I am at something of a loss as to why you create a thread called "Brexit Benefits", and then give nothing but examples of perceived disadvantages, rather than any benefits. There have undoubtedly been problems, but the sky hasn't exactly fallen in, has it?
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU? 2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
I am at something of a loss as to why you create a thread called "Brexit Benefits", and then give nothing but examples of perceived disadvantages, rather than any benefits. There have undoubtedly been problems, but the sky hasn't exactly fallen in, has it?
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU? 2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
I think that anyone can start a thread, and call it whatever they want. Once I am able to see some benefits I might post them. Anyone is able to post on this thread any benefits that they see so far. I dont think Boris is capable of being an effective PM. All available evidence shows that this is not possible. We were still members of the EU when the vaccine orders were placed. Each member country had the choice of opting in to the EU scheme or to go or alone. So in answer to your question it made no difference.
I am at something of a loss as to why you create a thread called "Brexit Benefits", and then give nothing but examples of perceived disadvantages, rather than any benefits. There have undoubtedly been problems, but the sky hasn't exactly fallen in, has it?
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU? 2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
Covid vaccine decisions have little to do with Brexit
James Kane 02 December 2020 The UK has managed the feat of becoming the first Western country to approve a Covid vaccine. But Brexit isn’t the reason why and it could make the roll-out harder, writes James Kane
Shortly after the announcement that the UK’s medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), had approved the first Covid vaccine to be rolled out, health secretary Matt Hancock asserted that it was “because of Brexit” that the UK had been able to do this ahead of its EU neighbours. The government also explained its refusal to participate in the joint EU vaccine purchasing scheme earlier this year by saying that it could secure doses more quickly itself. Others, however, have claimed that Brexit will actually make the rollout of the UK’s vaccination programme more difficult. Who is right?
The UK will be faster off the vaccine mark than its neighbours The government has stated that the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will be administered in the week of 7 December. This makes it the first Western country to approve the widespread rollout of a vaccine: the US is likely to follow in a week or so, while the EU is unlikely to approve any Covid vaccine for use until the start of 2021. At a time when hundreds of people are still dying of coronavirus daily, the UK authorities’ speed in approving a vaccine could well save lives.
The UK is also better supplied with vaccines than its EU neighbours. The UK authorities have bought more vaccine doses per head of population than almost any other country in the world, with contracts signed for over five doses per Briton. Only Canada and the US have bought more. The EU’s joint procurement scheme has acquired only three doses for each European citizen.
The UK could have followed the same course of vaccine action if it were an EU member That said, none of these successes can be chalked up to Brexit. As the chief executive of the MHRA swiftly pointed out, Mr Hancock was wrong to say that the UK could approve the vaccine early because it was no longer subject to EU rules. The MHRA’s decision was taken in accordance with the relevant EU legislation, which allows member states to grant temporary authorisation for a medicinal product in response to the spread of infectious diseases (among others). [1] This legislation still applies to the UK until the end of the transition period. Any EU member state could have used the same provision of the legislation to approve the vaccine. They decided not to for political and technical reasons, not legal ones.
Similarly, the member states were in no way obliged to take part in the EU’s joint vaccine procurement scheme. The EU has very limited competences for public health under its founding treaties: it can take action only to “support, coordinate or supplement the actions of the Member States”. The EU member states in this case voluntarily decided to opt into the joint procurement scheme. If one or more of them had decided to follow the UK’s path and procure its own vaccines, no one would have stopped them.
Tariffs won’t impede vaccine rollout – but border delays might From the other side of the debate, some voices have claimed that Brexit will make the UK’s vaccination programme more difficult. While the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine that is likely to be the workhorse of the UK’s vaccination programme is manufactured domestically, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that MHRA has just approved will be imported from Pfizer’s facility at Puurs in Belgium.
Fortunately, tariffs will not drive up the price of a vaccine, even if the UK leaves the transition period without a free trade agreement. Both the UK and the EU have set their “most-favoured nation tariff” – the tariff they charge countries with which they don’t have a trade deal – for vaccines at zero. (Even if they hadn’t, they could still set it to zero temporarily – as the EU did for personal protective equipment earlier this year.)
Perhaps a greater risk is supply chain disruption caused by the introduction of new customs checks on 1 January – which will happen whether or not there is a deal. When the UK was preparing for a no-deal exit in March and October 2019, the government developed plans to ensure the flow of medicines into the UK. Pharmaceutical importers would have been issued special “tickets” giving them priority access to ferries. Similar measures have been adopted this year, with additional ferry capacity for priority goods like medicines due to be available away from the short straits – where disruption is most likely – and more advanced traffic management plans in place.
But as the Institute pointed out in its recent paper on Brexit preparedness, the poor state of government and business preparations means that disruption at the border seems inevitable come 1 January. With less than a month to go, the government will need to make sure it has done enough to ensure its vaccination programme is not caught up in that disruption.
I am at something of a loss as to why you create a thread called "Brexit Benefits", and then give nothing but examples of perceived disadvantages, rather than any benefits. There have undoubtedly been problems, but the sky hasn't exactly fallen in, has it?
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU? 2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
The EU did negotiate a far better price for the AZ, and Pfizer vaccines.
Do I think we would be financially better off still in the EU? Yes. The European Economic Community (as it once was) has enormous benefits.
But European Union? Not so much.
We have (rightly or wrongly) democratically chosen to follow a different path. Will that have costs? Undoubtedly. But we need to make the best of it. And sometimes, just sometimes, we may get benefits from not being in the EU.
I too am a glass half full person.
I have spent virtually my whole working life running sales teams.
Nobody with a half empty glass could survive in a sales team for more than 5 minutes, never mind lead them.
I dont think that having a half full glass prevents you from pointing out things that are just wrong.
I am at something of a loss as to why you create a thread called "Brexit Benefits", and then give nothing but examples of perceived disadvantages, rather than any benefits. There have undoubtedly been problems, but the sky hasn't exactly fallen in, has it?
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU? 2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
The EU did negotiate a far better price for the AZ, and Pfizer vaccines.
True. But they didn't get them Seems strange that there can be different pricing when this is supposedly "not for profit"
The authorisation process would have been identical.
But if we were still in the EU, we would have been forced to hand over our excess vaccine. Like every club, you have to look after your fellow members.
Of course anyone can call a thread anything they want. But calling it 1 thing and doing precisely the opposite is a bit strange
I am at something of a loss as to why you create a thread called "Brexit Benefits", and then give nothing but examples of perceived disadvantages, rather than any benefits. There have undoubtedly been problems, but the sky hasn't exactly fallen in, has it?
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU? 2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
The EU did negotiate a far better price for the AZ, and Pfizer vaccines.
True. But they didn't get them Seems strange that there can be different pricing when this is supposedly "not for profit"
The authorisation process would have been identical.
But if we were still in the EU, we would have been forced to hand over our excess vaccine. Like every club, you have to look after your fellow members.
Of course anyone can call a thread anything they want. But calling it 1 thing and doing precisely the opposite is a bit strange
I am at something of a loss as to why you create a thread called "Brexit Benefits", and then give nothing but examples of perceived disadvantages, rather than any benefits. There have undoubtedly been problems, but the sky hasn't exactly fallen in, has it?
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU? 2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
The EU did negotiate a far better price for the AZ, and Pfizer vaccines.
True. But they didn't get them Seems strange that there can be different pricing when this is supposedly "not for profit"
The authorisation process would have been identical.
But if we were still in the EU, we would have been forced to hand over our excess vaccine. Like every club, you have to look after your fellow members.
Of course anyone can call a thread anything they want. But calling it 1 thing and doing precisely the opposite is a bit strange
I am still waiting for the post Brexit paradise that was promised by Boris.
We were still members of the EU when the vaccine orders were placed. Each member country had the choice of opting in to the EU scheme or to go or alone. So in answer to your question it made no difference.
I am at something of a loss as to why you create a thread called "Brexit Benefits", and then give nothing but examples of perceived disadvantages, rather than any benefits. There have undoubtedly been problems, but the sky hasn't exactly fallen in, has it?
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU? 2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
I am at something of a loss as to why you create a thread called "Brexit Benefits", and then give nothing but examples of perceived disadvantages, rather than any benefits. There have undoubtedly been problems, but the sky hasn't exactly fallen in, has it?
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU? 2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
The EU did negotiate a far better price for the AZ, and Pfizer vaccines.
True. But they didn't get them Seems strange that there can be different pricing when this is supposedly "not for profit"
The authorisation process would have been identical.
But if we were still in the EU, we would have been forced to hand over our excess vaccine. Like every club, you have to look after your fellow members.
Of course anyone can call a thread anything they want. But calling it 1 thing and doing precisely the opposite is a bit strange
I am at something of a loss as to why you create a thread called "Brexit Benefits", and then give nothing but examples of perceived disadvantages, rather than any benefits. There have undoubtedly been problems, but the sky hasn't exactly fallen in, has it?
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU? 2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
The EU did negotiate a far better price for the AZ, and Pfizer vaccines.
True. But they didn't get them Seems strange that there can be different pricing when this is supposedly "not for profit"
The authorisation process would have been identical.
But if we were still in the EU, we would have been forced to hand over our excess vaccine. Like every club, you have to look after your fellow members.
Of course anyone can call a thread anything they want. But calling it 1 thing and doing precisely the opposite is a bit strange
hhyftrftdr Member Posts: 7,455 January 18 Loving the oxymoron thread title.
The red wall should hear Hammond’s hard truths about BrexitI sincerely hope that it is only the lunatic fringe of Brexiters who do not accept that, having made the disastrous mistake of leaving the EU, this country should now try to align itself as closely as possible with the trading arrangements we have crassly abandoned.
The chaos surrounding the “protocol” which is supposed to answer the latest manifestation of the Irish Question is the most extreme example of the damage caused by the rest of the UK leaving the single market. But for the past five weeks the obstacles arising from trying to unscramble the egg of our relationship with the rest of the European economy have been widely publicised, the reductio ad absurdum being the way in which businesses – in order to stay in business! – are finding it necessary to relocate some or all of their operations to continental Europe – in other words, within the single market.
The European leaders whom Boris Johnson is happy to call “our friends and partners” – rich from a prime minister who has severed a historic partnership – made friendly overtures to the UK last weekend, notwithstanding the way this government stretched their patience to the limits during the Brexit negotiations. Unfortunately, and to the delight of the Brexiters, their overtures were drowned by the vaccine furore. The European commission’s plan to put an embargo on vaccine shipments from the EU to the UK was plain stupid: shortsighted and, mercifully, short-lived. But it has given rise to all sorts of nonsense about the putative “dividends” of Brexit.
Which brings me to a most interesting interview given shortly before Christmas by the former chancellor Philip Hammond to the thinktank Britain in a Changing Europe.
This was one of a series of interviews for the historical record with people who were close to government discussions over Brexit. In 2006, my old friend Sir Howard Davies, then director of the London School of Economics, had the bright idea of inviting former chancellors to reminisce in tranquillity about their time in office, in a series called – echoes of Chaucer – The Chancellors’ Tales. I see Hammond’s interview as a worthy continuation – not least because it has prompted a savage riposte from one Nick Timothy, who was Theresa May’s chief of staff, and, like May, does not emerge well from Hammond’s account. In Chaucerian terms, Timothy hardly counts as a “parfit gentil knight”. I shall spare you the intemperate language he uses.
He predicts 'the cost … will be pretty much 100% absorbed by exactly the demographic profile that voted for Johnson, having never voted Tory before'
Not to put too fine a point on it, both Hammond and his officials concluded that May and Timothy had precious little clue about the economic and trading dangers of Brexit, and were obsessed by immigration from the rest of the EU – immigration, by the way, that produced economic benefits, a flow that has now been reversed, with deleterious consequences reported by many businesses.
Hammond explains that he was not a Remainer for the kind of cultural reasons – as well as economic – that influenced people such as his predecessor Ken Clarke, and, for that matter, yours truly. No, he became a strong Remainer during his time as foreign secretary, when he saw how much influence for good the UK exerted in Brussels. In one important passage he notes that the then cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, told May “of the extent to which the British economy, for better or worse, had become utterly dependent on its European supply chains and its European customs base, almost without us noticing.” (My italics.)
Well, everyone is noticing now. And, in addition to the businesses that are suffering, Hammond predicts “the cost … will be pretty much 100% absorbed by exactly the demographic profile that voted Leave, then voted for Boris Johnson, having never voted Tory before.”
A theme of Hammond’s story is how, throughout the Cameron-May-Johnson premierships, the tail – the extreme Brexit lot who call themselves the European Research Group – wagged the prime ministerial dog.
We are seeing something similar now in the way that the Labour leadership seems obsessed by the need to pacify the so-called “red wall” voters referred to by Hammond. Keir Starmer has been on the case of the many disastrous decisions made, or not made, by Johnson before the apparent success of the vaccine came to No 10’s political rescue.
But Starmer was right all along about the absurdity of Brexit and should be hammering this home. One way or another we need proper access to the single market. Among others, our musicians realise this. Perhaps the pro-European cause needs the kind of help that the footballer Marcus Rashford brought to the issue of school meals.
Elton John and Sting have made a start. Let’s have more!
Comments
Me? I was a remainer in every way....until Jacob Rees Mogg said the fish in our waters that we used to sell abroad ( as we as a nation don’t want to eat 80-90%) are much happier now...well
If I knew that then..well, Brexit all the way for me after such a considered response from the Mogster
I laughed at this bit.
On a serious note and this does worry me, you appear to be in a constant state of ire, railing at everything and finding no joy, hope or delight in anything at all.
The below is a list of deadly serious, angry threads that I have started , or posted on in the last 2 days.
Gorilla Glue
On Line Dating?
Daily Cartoons.
Extremely Dangerous Driver.
We Dont Give A Sh.t What He Thinks
Grave Insult.
Giant Jock Snake
Your Hands Show Off Your Eating Habits
Killed His Chickens
This makes your comment idiotic.
Do I think we would be financially better off still in the EU? Yes. The European Economic Community (as it once was) has enormous benefits.
But European Union? Not so much.
We have (rightly or wrongly) democratically chosen to follow a different path. Will that have costs? Undoubtedly. But we need to make the best of it. And sometimes, just sometimes, we may get benefits from not being in the EU.
Liam Campling, Professor of International Business and Development at Queen Mary University warned of the potential consequences if the Brexit deal is not adhered to. During an interview with Express.co.uk, Professor Campling discussed the consequences of the UK shortening the five year fishing transition period agreed. He insisted this would be dangerous as it would allow the EU the opportunity to implement tariffs on fishing goods.
"Again, that would mean the EU would be entirely within its rights to introduce tariffs on EU imports of fish and fish products from the UK.
"We would potentially have more quota but we would have nowhere to sell it.
"That would be a huge blow to the average British fisherman."
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/boris-johnson-warned-abandoning-brexit-fishing-deal-could-spark-brutal-retaliation-from-eu/ar-BB1drB9N?ocid=msedgntp
In 1921, Sir Edward Carson, leader of the Irish unionists, uttered words anyone tempted to fall for the charms of English Tories should learn by heart. “What a fool I was. I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative party into power.”
The Liberal Democrats have been saying much the same for five years. Working-class voters in red wall constituencies will be saying much the same in five years’ time. Today’s puppets, however, are Carson’s heirs in the Democratic Unionist party. Couldn’t they see what would happen? Did they not read the polls that showed English Tories would rather accept a united Ireland and independent Scotland than give up on Brexit? Boris Johnson’s wives, mistresses and colleagues all learned he would rat on them in the end. What made East Belfast Protestants think they would be different? Johnson duly ratted on them and dealt Ulster unionism a historic and perhaps terminal blow by partitioning the United Kingdom with a border in the Irish Sea.
I am searching my bookshelves to find an example to compare with their bottomless stupidity. The Trojans and the horse: at least they thought the war was over. Napoleon and Moscow: at least he had grounds for thinking himself invincible. Their motives were comprehensible. The DUP’s reasons for first supporting Brexit, and then allying with the Tory right in wrecking Theresa May’s deal, which aimed to preserve the territorial integrity of the UK, are beyond ordinary comprehension. They lie in the irrational urge to destroy.
Johnson’s Conservative party of the early 21st century imitates Andrew Bonar Law’s Conservative party of the early 20th. Before the First World War, the Tories incited the army to mutiny rather than accept home rule for Ireland. They wanted to use the fury of the Ulster Protestants Carson led as a weapon against the Liberal government.
In the early 21st as in the early 20th century extreme nationalism worked at the ballot box for the Tories
As George Dangerfield wrote in his Strange Death of Liberal England, Tories became sick of caution and respectability. They no longer could bear to hold on to “that attitude of critical and grumbling respect for government”. They no more cared that rejecting home rule would lead to war in Ireland than today’s Tories care that Brexit will lead to dole queues, borders within the UK and the revival of Scottish nationalism.
“Move fast and break things” is the authentic slogan of the Conservative party then and now. Own the libs. Don’t be a cuck. Crush the saboteurs, the mutineers, the enemies of the people. To ask what will be left of the UK, whether there even will be a UK, when everything is broken is to miss the point spectacularly. In the early 21st as in the early 20th century extreme nationalism worked at the ballot box for the Tories because now, as then, the Nietzschean mood was the spirit of the age.
The DUP could not resist it. With Donald Trump rising in the US and Nigel Farage and Johnson rising in the UK, could they really be expected to be left behind muttering timid cliches about “being careful what you wish for”? The voters of Northern Ireland tried to warn the DUP by voting 56% to 44% to stay in the EU.
Everyone who understood international relations said that, if loyalists and Protestant fundamentalists imagined Brexit would lead to the restoration of the border with the Republic, the United States and the EU would soon put them straight. The only way to avoid a border within the UK was to agree to a soft Brexit. It was their last chance. And the DUP used the power it had in the hung 2017 parliament to rule it out.
How they loved the attention. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a proper English toff, or close enough to Belfast eyes, told them: “I won’t abandon the DUP because I think they are the guardians of the union of the United Kingdom” and they believed him. Sammy Wilson rolled around the radio studios praising Boris Johnson’s “shock tactics” without it ever occurring to him that Ulster unionists would end up being the most shocked of all.
They think of themselves as tough political operators. “This is a battle of who blinks first and we’ve cut off our eyelids,” the DUP declared in the Brexit negotiations. In truth, the Good Friday agreement had made them marks waiting to be conned. By guaranteeing the DUP and Sinn Fein would always be in control, power sharing in Northern Ireland had atrophied their political skills. They didn’t see the threat coming.
Related: The Guardian view on Northern Ireland and Brexit: stick with the protocol | Editorial
Carson cried out his despair in 1921 because he wanted the whole of Ireland to stay in the British empire. After the Easter uprising and the Irish war of independence, London was no longer prepared to fight to retain control of the south. The Tories were back in power and would stay in power pretty much continuously until 1945. They could safely dump Carson and his friends.
The DUP’s stupidity is truly bottomless because no Irish republican war forced them to embrace Brexit and partition the union. Democratic Unionists weren’t, like so many settlers of the British empire, abandoned by the Tory metropolis when the price of maintaining colonial rule grew too high. Rather, they egged Tory England on as it went berserk. They hope now that the EU’s brief threat to impose a vaccine border in Ireland will save them.
But there’s no way out. Now, as always, the choice is a soft Brexit or no Brexit, which they ruled out; a border on the island of Ireland, which the world will not accept; or a border in the Irish Sea, which cuts unionists off from the rest of the UK and forces them to integrate with the Republic and the EU.
Last month, Ian Paisley Jr pointed at Conservative MPs in the Commons and said: “What did we do to members on those benches over there to be screwed over by this protocol? Ask your hearts, every single one, what did we do?”
I’ll tell you what you did, Paisley, you betrayed the best interests of your cause and country by allowing yourself to become a puppet in the political game to keep the Conservative party in power.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/duped-again-irish-unionists-and-the-long-sorry-history-of-tory-betrayal/ar-BB1ds23R?ocid=msedgntp
So, in the interests of debate as to possible benefits of Brexit, 2 simple questions:-
1. Do you think Boris has been a more effective PM since we left the EU?
2. Do you think that, if we were still in the EU, we would have been allowed to be so far ahead in vaccinations?
Once I am able to see some benefits I might post them.
Anyone is able to post on this thread any benefits that they see so far.
I dont think Boris is capable of being an effective PM.
All available evidence shows that this is not possible.
We were still members of the EU when the vaccine orders were placed.
Each member country had the choice of opting in to the EU scheme or to go or alone.
So in answer to your question it made no difference.
James Kane
02 December 2020
The UK has managed the feat of becoming the first Western country to approve a Covid vaccine. But Brexit isn’t the reason why and it could make the roll-out harder, writes James Kane
Shortly after the announcement that the UK’s medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), had approved the first Covid vaccine to be rolled out, health secretary Matt Hancock asserted that it was “because of Brexit” that the UK had been able to do this ahead of its EU neighbours. The government also explained its refusal to participate in the joint EU vaccine purchasing scheme earlier this year by saying that it could secure doses more quickly itself. Others, however, have claimed that Brexit will actually make the rollout of the UK’s vaccination programme more difficult. Who is right?
The UK will be faster off the vaccine mark than its neighbours
The government has stated that the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will be administered in the week of 7 December. This makes it the first Western country to approve the widespread rollout of a vaccine: the US is likely to follow in a week or so, while the EU is unlikely to approve any Covid vaccine for use until the start of 2021. At a time when hundreds of people are still dying of coronavirus daily, the UK authorities’ speed in approving a vaccine could well save lives.
The UK is also better supplied with vaccines than its EU neighbours. The UK authorities have bought more vaccine doses per head of population than almost any other country in the world, with contracts signed for over five doses per Briton. Only Canada and the US have bought more. The EU’s joint procurement scheme has acquired only three doses for each European citizen.
The UK could have followed the same course of vaccine action if it were an EU member
That said, none of these successes can be chalked up to Brexit. As the chief executive of the MHRA swiftly pointed out, Mr Hancock was wrong to say that the UK could approve the vaccine early because it was no longer subject to EU rules. The MHRA’s decision was taken in accordance with the relevant EU legislation, which allows member states to grant temporary authorisation for a medicinal product in response to the spread of infectious diseases (among others). [1] This legislation still applies to the UK until the end of the transition period. Any EU member state could have used the same provision of the legislation to approve the vaccine. They decided not to for political and technical reasons, not legal ones.
Similarly, the member states were in no way obliged to take part in the EU’s joint vaccine procurement scheme. The EU has very limited competences for public health under its founding treaties: it can take action only to “support, coordinate or supplement the actions of the Member States”. The EU member states in this case voluntarily decided to opt into the joint procurement scheme. If one or more of them had decided to follow the UK’s path and procure its own vaccines, no one would have stopped them.
Tariffs won’t impede vaccine rollout – but border delays might
From the other side of the debate, some voices have claimed that Brexit will make the UK’s vaccination programme more difficult. While the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine that is likely to be the workhorse of the UK’s vaccination programme is manufactured domestically, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that MHRA has just approved will be imported from Pfizer’s facility at Puurs in Belgium.
Fortunately, tariffs will not drive up the price of a vaccine, even if the UK leaves the transition period without a free trade agreement. Both the UK and the EU have set their “most-favoured nation tariff” – the tariff they charge countries with which they don’t have a trade deal – for vaccines at zero. (Even if they hadn’t, they could still set it to zero temporarily – as the EU did for personal protective equipment earlier this year.)
Perhaps a greater risk is supply chain disruption caused by the introduction of new customs checks on 1 January – which will happen whether or not there is a deal. When the UK was preparing for a no-deal exit in March and October 2019, the government developed plans to ensure the flow of medicines into the UK. Pharmaceutical importers would have been issued special “tickets” giving them priority access to ferries. Similar measures have been adopted this year, with additional ferry capacity for priority goods like medicines due to be available away from the short straits – where disruption is most likely – and more advanced traffic management plans in place.
But as the Institute pointed out in its recent paper on Brexit preparedness, the poor state of government and business preparations means that disruption at the border seems inevitable come 1 January. With less than a month to go, the government will need to make sure it has done enough to ensure its vaccination programme is not caught up in that disruption.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/covid-vaccine-decisions-brexit
I have spent virtually my whole working life running sales teams.
Nobody with a half empty glass could survive in a sales team for more than 5 minutes, never mind lead them.
I dont think that having a half full glass prevents you from pointing out things that are just wrong.
Seems strange that there can be different pricing when this is supposedly "not for profit"
The authorisation process would have been identical.
But if we were still in the EU, we would have been forced to hand over our excess vaccine. Like every club, you have to look after your fellow members.
Of course anyone can call a thread anything they want. But calling it 1 thing and doing precisely the opposite is a bit strange
We were still members of the EU when the vaccine orders were placed.
Each member country had the choice of opting in to the EU scheme or to go or alone.
So in answer to your question it made no difference.
https://www.azquotes.com/author/7482-Boris_Johnson
5 Tory Promises Broken After Boris Johnson's Brexit Deal
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brexit-deal-promises-broken-tories_uk_5fe3805cc5b6acb534565d3f
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/britons-trying-to-make-overseas-payments-find-them-blocked-after-brexit-as-some-european-firms-refuse-to-accept-transfers-from-uk-accounts/ar-BB1drfyW?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/brexit/fury-at-gove-as-exports-to-eu-slashed-by-68-since-brexit/ar-BB1ds8Hq?ocid=msedgntp
January 18
Loving the oxymoron thread title.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/the-growing-brexit-threat-to-ireland/ar-BB1dsE4y?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/brexit-live-brussels-alarm-bells-as-attorney-general-backs-boris-plan-to-rip-up-eu-rules/ar-BB1dsEqF?ocid=msedgntp
The chaos surrounding the “protocol” which is supposed to answer the latest manifestation of the Irish Question is the most extreme example of the damage caused by the rest of the UK leaving the single market. But for the past five weeks the obstacles arising from trying to unscramble the egg of our relationship with the rest of the European economy have been widely publicised, the reductio ad absurdum being the way in which businesses – in order to stay in business! – are finding it necessary to relocate some or all of their operations to continental Europe – in other words, within the single market.
The European leaders whom Boris Johnson is happy to call “our friends and partners” – rich from a prime minister who has severed a historic partnership – made friendly overtures to the UK last weekend, notwithstanding the way this government stretched their patience to the limits during the Brexit negotiations. Unfortunately, and to the delight of the Brexiters, their overtures were drowned by the vaccine furore. The European commission’s plan to put an embargo on vaccine shipments from the EU to the UK was plain stupid: shortsighted and, mercifully, short-lived. But it has given rise to all sorts of nonsense about the putative “dividends” of Brexit.
Which brings me to a most interesting interview given shortly before Christmas by the former chancellor Philip Hammond to the thinktank Britain in a Changing Europe.
This was one of a series of interviews for the historical record with people who were close to government discussions over Brexit. In 2006, my old friend Sir Howard Davies, then director of the London School of Economics, had the bright idea of inviting former chancellors to reminisce in tranquillity about their time in office, in a series called – echoes of Chaucer – The Chancellors’ Tales. I see Hammond’s interview as a worthy continuation – not least because it has prompted a savage riposte from one Nick Timothy, who was Theresa May’s chief of staff, and, like May, does not emerge well from Hammond’s account. In Chaucerian terms, Timothy hardly counts as a “parfit gentil knight”. I shall spare you the intemperate language he uses.
He predicts 'the cost … will be pretty much 100% absorbed by exactly the demographic profile that voted for Johnson, having never voted Tory before'
Not to put too fine a point on it, both Hammond and his officials concluded that May and Timothy had precious little clue about the economic and trading dangers of Brexit, and were obsessed by immigration from the rest of the EU – immigration, by the way, that produced economic benefits, a flow that has now been reversed, with deleterious consequences reported by many businesses.
Hammond explains that he was not a Remainer for the kind of cultural reasons – as well as economic – that influenced people such as his predecessor Ken Clarke, and, for that matter, yours truly. No, he became a strong Remainer during his time as foreign secretary, when he saw how much influence for good the UK exerted in Brussels. In one important passage he notes that the then cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, told May “of the extent to which the British economy, for better or worse, had become utterly dependent on its European supply chains and its European customs base, almost without us noticing.” (My italics.)
Well, everyone is noticing now. And, in addition to the businesses that are suffering, Hammond predicts “the cost … will be pretty much 100% absorbed by exactly the demographic profile that voted Leave, then voted for Boris Johnson, having never voted Tory before.”
A theme of Hammond’s story is how, throughout the Cameron-May-Johnson premierships, the tail – the extreme Brexit lot who call themselves the European Research Group – wagged the prime ministerial dog.
We are seeing something similar now in the way that the Labour leadership seems obsessed by the need to pacify the so-called “red wall” voters referred to by Hammond. Keir Starmer has been on the case of the many disastrous decisions made, or not made, by Johnson before the apparent success of the vaccine came to No 10’s political rescue.
But Starmer was right all along about the absurdity of Brexit and should be hammering this home. One way or another we need proper access to the single market. Among others, our musicians realise this. Perhaps the pro-European cause needs the kind of help that the footballer Marcus Rashford brought to the issue of school meals.
Elton John and Sting have made a start. Let’s have more!
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/the-red-wall-should-hear-hammond-s-hard-truths-about-brexit/ar-BB1dsvgf?ocid=msedgntp