Westminstenders: Break Up or Make Up?

[RedToothBrush]

The next week or so appears to be yet another crunch point (not that any of these crunch points have actually resolved anything so far).

The EU is set to outline the plan for Ireland. Which everyone thought had already been outlined and agreed already. And it had been admitted was legally binding.

Except apparently we don't want to do that, and we are now crying about how the EU want to break up Britain (nothing to do with England wanting to leave the EU and Scotland and NI wanting to stay in it of course).

Jeremy Corbyn has now apparently decided that the customs union is a good idea. David Davis and Liam Fox have responded by saying that this would stop us making our own trade deals. Yes this has obviously stopped Turkey, and why aren't we doing as much trade with China etc as Germany anyway? A vote in the HoC looms before Easter. Will Tory rebels support.

Will Jeremy Corbyn bow to pressure over the single market too? The customs union alone does not stop the border issue in Ireland. Nor does it stop ridiculous queues at Dover. I'm not sure Corbyn is one for listening though. He's got a whiff of power and democracy and reality is just a hindrance to utopia.

As for the Great Repeal Bill. Word has it, its not going too clever in the HoL. The conservatives had something of a show of strength with an unusual number turning up for the debate. But few on the backbenches were willing to speak in favour of...

It all feels like we are making no progress at all. We are still bleating on about cherry picked deals as if this is a negotiation. Its not.

Watched that this morning, BigChoc. OH said what are those figures based on? Where are those figures from? They can throw out any old rubbish. And they are of such integrity, (not), they do.

But the lie is out there. That is the important bit. Like in the referendum. Why didn't Marr ask him where the numbers were from? Carpet bagger Liars and Shysters, in my humble opinion. IDS is doing wall to wall propaganda duty at the moment. He is never off the feckin' telly. All from my humble perspective.

BigChic

How do they get away with it? More to the point, why are they allowed to? Obviously, they think they're entitled to, so they blithely do. And they never seem to get called out on it.

IDS has spent the past couple of years (since he suddenly rose from the dead onto our screens during the Referendum campaign) gazing into cameras and asserting one false statement after another.

Leaving aside why anyone believes him any more, why is he allowed to go on doing it? This is serious stuff and he thinks he can say what the hell he likes with no comeback at all.

Maybe he followed instructions further up the thread and Googled the figures. Apparently it's easy to find the right figures if you just Google enough.

If Guardian has an accurate ear to the Brussels ground, the E27 answer to May'a speech will be "nope" …

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/04/post-brexit-deal-eu-to-keep-draft-guidelines-short-and-general

EU diplomat: "We are ships passing each other in the night. We are not connecting.”
…
It will be made clear that the call for a mutual recognition of regulatory frameworks and Swiss-style membership of EU agencies, including the European aviation safety agency,
will not be possible with the UK outside the single market.
…
"In the field of financial services, which is key to the British economy,
the UK’s demand … to give certainty over the future for service providers in the City will go wanting.

Opps, fat fingers, I mean BigChoc. Although I'm sure you're very chic.

Put in complaints to the BBC
it was the only way to get Nigel Lawson booted off the Today Programme
it HAS to be complained about

One of the hosts on either DP, SP or Marr repeated the 'ratting' remark about remainers. Can't remember who. The rat thing is upping the vitriol. Frank Field started it. Calling people rats, basically. Then IDS repeated it (he has been on the tell all week). Now it has been repeated again by one of the hosts.

Keir Starmer
@Keir_Starmer
17m17 minutes ago

Just landed in Switzerland for full round of political meetings about Brexit, Swiss/UK relations and much else.

Nick Cohen was good today.

The irresponsible know-nothing right that treats everything as a joke

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/04/brexit-culture-war-tory-right-compromise-impossible-mocking-liberals

"I am not being vulgar but am drawing on the work of Harry G Frankfurt. Unlike liars, who at least know the truth when they deceive, the philosopher explained, bullshitters have no concern for truth. They don’t care if they are lying or not. They just say whatever it takes to win. “By virtue of this,” Frankfurt ruled, “bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”"

Control the food; control the people.

Sorry, I'd missed a page; thought we were still on transport routes and Dover.
'rat' thing was used last time too. Cameron did refer to swarms of migrants too though? Nasty.
TalkinPeace R4 Feedback tonight, did a short piece about complaints about brexit coverage today, they said they'd do a longer one soon. Adonis successfully got one misleading headline taken off their website.

@AP
BREAKING: Exit poll: RAI state TV says populist 5-Star Movement leading Italian election but far short of majority

Peter Thal Larsen
✔
@peter_tl
Things to remember about the Italian election:

1. Exit polls aren’t totally reliable
2. Seats are allocated by proportional representation AND first-past-the-post.
3. So percentages don’t necessarily translate into number of seats.
4. Results can differ between the two houses.

10:16 PM - Mar 4, 2018

Things likely to be a bit clearer in the morning. God save us from a Lega/Forza Italia coalition (Lega are proper send-them-home fascists and Forza is headed by Berlusconi ). The % in the exit poll suggest a pretty even three way split between 5*, a Berlusconi coalition and - if they could stop in-fighting - a coalition of leftist parties.

To go back to the IDS trade statements - it’s taken from this:

www.civitas.org.uk/press/no-benefit-for-uk-trade-from-eu-collective-clout/

It’s to demonstrate that small countries can negotiate trade deals as successfully as large blocs.

IDS was trying to say that the countries that Singapore and Switzerland have trade agreements with have aggregated GDPs of $38.7 trillion and $39.8 trillion respectively (bearing in mind that EU GDP is $16.7 trillion). The aggregated GDP of the countries that the EU has trade agreements with is $7.7 trillion (all 2015 figures).

What IDS probably didn’t point out is:

About 90 per cent of the agreements of these four smaller, independent countries include services, whereas only 68 per cent of the EU’s trade agreements do so, an omission especially harmful to the UK, with its strong service sector.

Meant to add, where it refers to “four smaller countries”, that’s Singapore, Switzerland, Chile and South Korea.

... And obviously nothing to do with the actual value of trade covered in those agreements.

And so it starts....

BBC news says that the Irish Government suggests that the UK Gov's proposals may not be sufficient (that there is still not sufficient detail).

No Shit Sherlock

Agnes

IDS was not telling the truth, because he claimed Singapore & Switzerland had those amounts of trade
totally different to having deals with countries who had this total GDP

• which is in itself totally irrelevant anyway:

I have "deals" with Microsoft, Amazon etc so I could claim I have business arrangements with companies worth billions
I would be lying if I said I did billions in trade, or if I negotiated as an equal.

What matters is the actual amount of trade Switzerland and Singapore do, with all their trade deals
Their exports, as I posted, are a minute fraction of the numbers he quoted:
Singapore $33 billion GDP instead of $_ 90 trillion_ trade

The usual propaganda is one thing
This is downright lying

Sadly, the average listener / reader, especially a Leaver who wants to believe, would not realist the $ 90 trillion is bollocks.

Given such distortions, I would be interested how the civitas site cherry-picked their definitions of deals

The EU has about 900 trade arrangements and deals to smooth trade, e,g. about 60 with the USA alone
Of course, most are not full FTAs

Also, over the years, the EU has been delayed in negotiating some trade deals by UK demands, wrt services and also visas

e.g. The E27 deal with India will go much more smoothly now that the UK can't veto extra visas for Indian tech workers and family members

ID has done this too often over the last 2 years.

Either he keeps being fed wrong facts by sinister people who are deceiving him
or he keeps misunderstanding them / fluffing his lines - but never finds out or corrects his mistake -
or he is deliberately lying

People might not mind too much about Cornish Pasties or Cumberland sausages, but I can't imagine that the Scottish Whisky distillers are going to be pleased with their protective status being dropped.

This is an interesting article from the Spectator in 2016, before the ref.

After all, many bilateral trade agreements aren’t worth the value of the paper they are written on because, just like the Australia-U.S. deal, they reshuffle trade rather than create more of it. They don’t come with much liberalisation. That’s also why the British government first rejected the idea of a transatlantic trade agreement – now known as TTIP – when the idea first emerged in 2012. .......

The offered conditions wouldn’t give Europe much new market access, especially in India’s closed sectors – finance, retail, telecom, life sciences, and government procurement, and would be inconsequential for the economy. .....

The Swiss trade deal with China has largely been inconsequential for bilateral trade. Swiss export growth to China after the deal has been weaker than, for instance, UK export growth to China.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/boris-and-the-brexiteers-are-talking-nonsense-about-britains-trade-policies/

Immigration Lawyers: current staffing levels mean each caseworker will process 1,500 of 3 million EU registration applications

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/19/home-office-admits-its-struggling-to-recruit-staff-to-register-eu-nationals

Or lovely Stilton. Not such a ticket price as Whisky, but gorgeous with grapes and crackers .

I don't know if I'd give IDS much benefit of the doubt. The smug way he grabbed onto 'ratting'. I know I'm going on about that, but it disturbs me greatly . And I don't think his Work and Pensions stint was troubled by much in the way of honour.

There was also an issue with the Sino-Swiss fta. In some cases, China accesses the Swiss market straight away, but Switzerland has to wait 15 years to access the Chinese markets.

1. The Switzerland-China trade deal gives China immediate access to

Swiss markets but Switzerland has to wait 15 years for access to Chinese markets. Switzerland, working mostly through the European Free Trade Association, has been effective in signing trade deals with important partners. But, it isn’t just about signing any deal; the UK should focus on signing comprehensive and fair deals. In the China-Switzerland trade deal, as the much bigger partner, China has set the terms of trade. It is allowed more time to remove tariffs on Swiss goods – up to 15 years in some cases – than the Swiss, who have to let in Chinese goods tariff-free almost immediately.v It is also limited in scope; it does not cover cars or financial services – two major export areas for the UK.

www.cbi.org.uk/business-issues/brexit-and-eu-negotiations/eu-business-facts/10-facts-about-eu-trade-deals-pdf/