Westministenders: Rebel Rebel Your Brexit is a Mess.

[RedToothBrush]

Hot Tramp, I love you so!

The European Parliament have agreed to progress talks to the next stage. Despite Brexiteers saying its not legally binding, it is apparent that the EU certainly disagree.

Not only that, but the wording of the deal goes further. It binds us to not being able to agree and new trade deals for 2 years.

The All Important Amendment 7 to the Great Repel Bill has been successful. May’s power grab has a set back.

By just FOUR votes the government was defeated. How May will be regretting that pointless election tonight.

Parliament will have a meaningful vote on the exit terms.

But don’t be too excited. Brussels might not like this as May can not guarantee the UK will agree to a deal. It means the the EU are negotiating with parliament NOT May now.

There is also the suggestion that the mood of parliament is changing and is beginning to lean more towards a EFTA / EEA type deal.

But equally this could also send us to the brink with a deal from the EU that could be rejected by parliament.

The stakes just got higher.

btw, I hazily remember reading that the blue colour goes back several hundred years - to the old English claim on the French throne

So it was to copy the French ?

Any history buffs awake ?

I'll be first in the queue for a burgundy passport cover when I get my blue passport

Has anyone watched The League or Gentlemen new series? Edward announced the other day that, 'WE'RE TAKING BACK CONTROOOOOOOLLLL!' as part of a wider 'Save Royston Vasey' campaign

Differentiating by color is very important to some people.
hehehehehehe

@Lazbotron
Passports go from burgundy to blue.
Like a bruise.
Like a bad bruise.

I'm very disappointed about the planned change of passport colours. I like my burgundy passport.

I really need to share this.

The question is, do we apply for a new one in time to still get the EU version, or do we wait it out, and hope that the next time round someone will have seen sense and we will be reapplying to the EU?

Anticipating a backlog at the passport office, how early will we have to apply to ensure we still get a burgundy one? As it happens, I have a bright blue cover for my passport, which has the old wording i.e. European Union on the front, and I don't plan to change that.

I hope it is just a rather odd troll, not someone who genuinely doesn't realise that food or money can't be magicked up at need

I refer you to Barnums observation upthread. Or add Einsteins supposed bon mots Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

The problem with democracy is not that people who believe there are fairies can vote. It's that people who believe they are fairies can vote.

Not sure what the big deal about blue passports is, we used to have blue passports in Sweden, it's not a unique British superior passport colour .
The new, old blue British passport will look provincial. Have you read the Daily Fail comments? Some people are so excited about having a blue passport saying it shows the world that "Britain is back".
Pathetic.

I'll be glad to get rid of those tatty EU passports. Can't wait for the blue ones. We should never have joined the wretched organisation in the first place.

It's a sad reflection on them that blue passports matter more to them than the destruction of the NHS, the starvation of the education system, the housing crisis, and the vendetta which is being waged against the sick and disabled. But hip hip hooray, blue passports. It won't bring the Empire back chums.

What will you need a passport for Viviennemary? Won't you be staying at home - I believe Skegness is bracing.

Just had a nose at the foodbank thread. for some reason I recognise the posternames of some contributors .

The OP may have been trolling, but they most certainly aren't.

However, on a wider note, it does highlight that there is a massive hole in UK education in that as far as I know, the question "Where does money come from ?" is never really addressed.

The first time I encountered it was aged 14, doing the Wiemar Republic, and hearing how inflation worked ... i.e why you can't just print money.

Mine doesn't expire until 2024. When I took it out, there was no prospect of leaving the EU on the horizon apart from a the noise made by a few wealthy Tories and UKIPers. The average person neither knew nor cared about the EU. So I do have a dilemma - apply stupidly early, and risk having a delay and getting a blue one sooner than I expected, or wait it out. Who knows it might just say England and Wales by the time 2024 comes round.

Wasn't Quantitative Easing just printing money?

•Viviennemary• what a vintagey flowery user name. Did it take you long to come up with it?

My Irish-EU passport is of far higher quality than my British-EU one. But sure, lets blame the quality on the EU rather than the UK printers who make them.

Sorry, am I doing facts again. Its a bit confusing to some isn't it.

There is no magic money tree to help the homeless, the poor, the NHS, etc.

But there's definitely one to bung to whoever can help the Tories get out of their self made mess.

My MP btw, who championed the change to Blue, is blocking people on twitter who have suggested that maybe he should be more bothered about the amount of homeless that have massively increased on our streets rather than worry about passport colours. But not before replying 'why are you moaning about the blue if you don't care about the colour'. Spectacularly missing the point, as ever.

I've been browsing through the sectoral analyses from the link kindly posted by Bigchoc

Mostly they are a basic summary of how things are, and how much of our trade comes from each sector. Then a summary of the alignment ( if any) of EU regs.For example Higher Education says there is no relevant regulatory alignment.

Obviously these have been prepared by Civil servants, not specialist economists with expertise in the relevant sector. Of course the impact bit at the end is blank.

I am trying to be open minded and see why the full impact can't be disclosed.

We are desperate for any old trade deal ( except the excellent one we threw away) and the World knows this. So why is revealing detail damaging?

I suppose that trade deals get negotiated chapter by chapter addressing different sectors. So I suppose perhaps it is maybe relevant to try and conceal which sectors we are most desperate about? But surely that is obvious from publicly available info about our main income sources.

Normally in a negotiation you keep quiet about how much you are prepared to pay, and leave the other party with the impression you have other options. Here we know how much we are going to pay.
Here the world knows that we don't have many options.We are at the mercy of protectionist Trump. The world know May has prioritised schmoozing Saudi and now Poland. ( Great).The world also knows China are more interested in us as part of the EU and that India and Aus would require freer movement.

So what is the actual detriment in the negotiation of revealing the predicted impact in each sector ?

Who gives a stuff about the colour of a bloomin passport. There's not a wide colour range anyway. Some countries have green, otherwise they're all navy or burgundy anyway. Jeez.

As for Britain being back. What? Back to being a leading power in a huge trading bloc?

Or did they mean the small disunited poor man of Europe is back?

I was talking to a highly switched on helpful ( Polish) shop assistant the other day and he was saying how all the smaller EU countries wish they had our ( former) clout in the EU.

I don't like the use of the word hate but I really do hate the Daily Bile/Vile.

Key gems from the sectoral analyses:

• The fishing industry supplies fish to fish and chip shops'.
• Fishing industry is mainly in the coastal areas
• "Space manufacturing is often bespoke or involves very limited manufacturing runs"
• The paper covering the insurance and pensions sector, which employs one in every 100 British workers, is 2,732 words long. “Insurance business operates by firms writing insurance policies for clients, intermediated by brokers,” it reveals. “Insurance firms in turn can pass on excess risk to reinsurance firms, via reinsurance brokers. Insurance underwriting requires large amounts of capital, so the industry tends to be dominated by large firms.”
• “The parts of an aircraft can be simplistically split into three areas,” began the first, on aerospace. It was explained what the industry makes: “structures which include the nose, fuselage, wings, engine nacelles (which encase the engines) and tail; propulsion system which includes engines and propellers, or fan blades; and systems which include the electronics used in the flight system.”

Boeing and Airbus

It went on to reveal that there are two companies in the world that make large passenger aircraft. Now that the documents are public, these firms can be named as Boeing Co. and Airbus SE.

Tim Sculthorpe
@timsculthorpe
#breaking #sectoralanalysis "retail is a large and diverse sector... products sold range from daily necessities to high-end luxury goods"

Martin McKee #FBPE
@martinmckee
Almost no mention of food security in @DExEUgov sectoral analysis, www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/Exiting-the-European-Union/17-19/Sectoral%20Analyses/2-Sectoral-Analyses-Agriculture-Report.pdf even though massive problems have been documented by @ProfTimLang et al. here: www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/newsandevents/2017/publications/food-brexit Staggering complacency in face of a severe national threat

And on top of that, the analyses have been run through plagiarised-detecting software and been given a score of 16% plagiarised which is just horrendous!

@reform_campaign
Some remember those wonderful blue passports with the stamp saying how much money you could take out of the country - capital controls due to the UK's economic collapse and intervention of the IMF. At one point it was down to £50. Happy days!

This passport issue is exasperating and depressing. Andrew Rosindell, Tory Brexiteer MP for Romford, in the Guardian article:

Speaking in April, the Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell said the burgundy EU passport had been a source of national “humiliation”. “The restoration of our own British passport is a clear statement to the world that Britain is back. Our British identity was slowly but surely being submerged into an artificial European one that most Brits felt increasingly unhappy about,” he told Press Association. “The humiliation of having a pink European Union passport will now soon be over and the United Kingdom nationals can once again feel pride and self-confidence in their own nationality when travelling, just as the Swiss and Americans can do.

I mean, really. What b***ks.
'Humiliation.' 'Pink.' 'Most Brits felt unhappy about...'?
Now, does he really think like that, or is he just playing to the Empire-minded Brexiteer gallery?

I suspect the former. It's worrying that someone like him can get into Parliament.

When there are so many huge global problems to solve... and when we are so clearly completely incapable of orchestrating a successful Brexit, (ref e.g. the Barnier Times interview posted by BigChoc at 00.30) it just seems ridiculous to be carving ourselves off from a network of support.

Where are the b**y Opposition? When are they going to oppose this nonsense?

I'm getting cross now.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/22/british-passports-will-be-navy-blue-after-brexit-says-home-office

hester no, he really does think like that. If you don't share that view though, he's normally more than happy to call you some choice names too. Top quality bloke him.