Westministenders: Talks Walk Out?

[RedToothBrush]

We are now on the countdown to whether we get a backstop Withdrawal Deal. May is hoping to get the EU to backdown on this saying that we will stay in the customs union until a deal is agreed on NI. That would mean come 29th March, we'd have no transistion period, but we'd still have a hard border in NI because we were out of the single market. And if the EU don't agree to it we are into the chances of accidental Brexit being sky high. The only way out would be revoking a50. May has hinted that if Tory MPs don't give her support we could end up with no brexit at all - whether she means revoking a50 or Beano isn't clear.

So onward to 18th October...

'Lets do more trade deals with China!'

www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies

The attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 U.S. companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America’s technology supply chain, according to extensive interviews with government and corporate sources.

Here have some food for thought.

Has anyone else read Jose Saramago? He has a book about the Iberian peninsula drifting away from Europe.

And we learn that Cornwall and Devon are really French (has anyone told them ?)

www.independent.co.uk/news/science/cornwall-france-geology-england-devon-armorica-avalonia-a8537151.html

It's things like this that make me doubt my atheism

No one reads T&Cs do they?

The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies

When I get bored of the open source Linux evangelists, I point out to them that it's immaterial whether you can "check" the source code of a program, unless you can also check the silicon it's going to run on.

Recent news that Intel hid an entire remote access administration tool in their newer CPUs only served to prove me right.

You'd think by now we'd be using AI to seek out these vulnerabilities if it was any good.

Anyhow, unless my memory is flaky, there's no chip fabrication facilities in the UK anymore. (So I wonder what the tariffs will be ?)

One way to power post-Brexit Britain

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-45745722

A school has introduced pedal machines under its desks in a bid to tackle the "rise in obesity and type 2 diabetes".

Thirty machines, costing £20 each, have been bought using the PE budget for pupils at Red Oak Primary in Lowestoft, Suffolk.

(contd)

On a related note, we had an A3 leaflet drop from Western Power a few days ago with lots of information about what to do if there's a power cut, and a priority service for the vulnerable.

I wonder what they know ?

EU Press release: Remarks by President Donald Tusk after his meeting with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2018/10/04/remarks-by-president-donald-tusk-after-his-meeting-with-taoiseach-leo-varadkar/

First of all, we want to focus on practical and realistic ways of minimising the damage caused by Brexit, on both sides of the channel.
Emotional arguments that stress the issue of dignity sound attractive, but they do not facilitate agreement.
...
Second, the task of the EU's negotiators is to defend the interests of the European Union as a whole, and of all the 27 member states.

We very much regret that the UK has decided to leave, and we hope for the best relationship in future, but no-one can expect that, because of Brexit, the EU will give up its fundamental values and key interests.
...
Third, in respecting our partners, we expect the same in return.
Comparing the European Union to the Soviet Union is as unwise as it is insulting. The Soviet Union was about prisons and gulags, borders and walls, violence against citizens and neighbours
< Hunt really pissed them off >
...
Today, after my long discussion with my guest, the Taoiseach, I want to say that the EU is united behind Ireland and the need to preserve the Northern Ireland peace process.
< not going to bully the RoI into dropping the backstop >
...
Unacceptable remarks that raise the temperature will achieve nothing except wasting more time.
What needs to be done is maximum progress by the October European Council.

You see there is an advantage to a manky '486 with floppy drives and no internet access!

Sounds so calm and grownup, but very clear,
in contrast to the jingoistic waffle from the PM & Uk govt ministers ever since the ref

At least in WW2 there were some 'upbeat' reports, even if they were lies or exaggerated. Even the black death is beginning to look like an aspiration we will fail to reach.
Since the idea seems to be to piss the EU off at all costs, we might as well have BoJo in as 'chief jester (sorry, PM) as he does have his 'comic' moments.

Hunt really pissed them off

Which suggests it was intentional (and therefore much worse) ?

I'm vaguely reminded of the Chinese originally believing that the British were - far from ill educated and barbarian - actually established masters in the art of Feng Shui. They originally thought this because when they saw how British towns and buildings were laid out, they could not believe it was so incredibly unsympathetic as to be an accident.

I don't think there was any way Hunt could have been so crass by accident. The question is, who thought it would be a good idea ?

I can almost see Guy Verhofstadt keeping it together until March, then 'letting go' with a massive version of the John Cleese thrashing the car episode.

On a serious note, I suspect part of the EU reticence comes from a desire to ensure the best for EU citizens who are looking increasingly like hostages to fortune to the UKs caprices. And when it's put that way, it should make you feel disgusted to be British.

Britain had to do the same with Idi Amin in Uganda - remember what he did to the one UK citizen he found to "punish" for Entebbe .

All of a sudden, Theresa May as Idi Amin doesn't look so funny, does it ?

,

Idi Amin's expulsion of highly educated and entrepreneurial people was a significant undoing of Uganda.
Asians who were significant traders, plus schoolteachers, doctors scientists etc were given a few days to leave the country or be killed.
Thus what was a relatively prosperous country collapsed overnight.
Subsistence farming is OK as far as it goes but it does not make a great economy. I have stayed in hotels in Uganda where there are bullet holes in the walls and downstairs rooms trashed as Amin's troops kept horses in them. There is a volcanic crater where soldiers threw the bodies of villagers who resisted the army.
In the North, there was the 'Lords Resistance Army' where kids as young as 9 or 10 would be given knives and automatic rifles and told to kill parents or anyone they don't like and were often on drugs.
That was not many years ago but I don't know if it is still happening.

A quick google check, yes it is ongoing and has been since 1986.
It blows a big hole in our worries about our kids going to play in the local park.

Idi Amin's expulsion of highly educated and entrepreneurial people was a significant undoing of Uganda. Asians who were significant traders, plus schoolteachers, doctors scientists etc were given a few days to leave the country or be killed.

One of my best friends from 1972 until he went to Uni (he had unconditional offers from Oxford and Cambridge, but chose Imperial to stay close to family) was kicked out of Uganda.

With Tusk and now Barnier, support seems solid for RoI backstop:

Michel Barnierr@MichelBarnier*

Delighted to meet again w/ Taoiseach @campaignforleo
We are in the final stage of the #Brexitt^ negotiations & working hand-in-hand w/ the Irish gov.
To agree to any deal, we need to have a legally sound backstop solution for Ireland and Northern Ireland



With Tusk and now Barnier, support seems solid for RoI backstop:

Or are they trolling the more lunatic Brexiteers on these shores ?

www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/04/scl_elections_pleads_not_guilty_data_notice_cambridge_analytica/

SCL Elections Ltd, the parent company of controversial data-mining outfit Cambridge Analytica, yesterday pleaded not guilty to a criminal charge of ignoring the Information Commissioner's Office.

(contd)

They are too grownup to troll
and these statements fit in with what the EU has said from the beginning
In fact they've always been consistent about their 3 prerequisites, including no hard NI border

The travel thread is going exactly as all other Brexit threads go. Plenty of people going “goodness gracious, why would Brexit affect anything?” and Leavers shouting “Project Fear! Scaremongering!”” and Remainers having to provide actual facts and reality.

I’m staying out of it apart from being tempted to see if I can kill that thread too.

Oh god someone’s just done a Millennium Bug on that thread 🤣 it’s like wearing a sign on your forehead saying “I’m an utter tool”

"But, but they haven't told us what they want. They haven't told us what they want?!"

Said in a high-pitched tone with a touch of hysteria, echoing "Nothing's changed. Nothing's changed"

It's not as if the EU hasn't. Told. The. UK. What. Its. Red. Lines. Were. Right. At. The. Start. Of. The. Negotiation.

Actually, I think part of the problem is that it had been called a negotiation. We knew what the rules were. We signed up to them. All we are doing now is and I don't know of this is a purely Scottish expression "concluding missives". Making sure the paperwork is done and dotting the i's and crossing the t's.

You don't "negotiate" to leave a club. You leave. You have no further rights to use the club. If you want to use the club, you pay for its services. That's where the only "negotiation" comes in - but that's the free trade deal that can only come into force (and needs to be agreed unanimously by the E27) after we have left.

Jo Maugham @jolyonmaugham
We have just, minutes ago, heard from the Court of Justice of the European Union. It has granted our request for expedition.