Westminstenders: The Slow No

[RedToothBrush]

Have to make this quick.

Johnson has made an 'offer' to the EU. Let's stress this isn't a deal because they haven't agreed.

The EU have made kind noises about it but will say no thanks.

The UK are expecting this, and despite what's been said apparently are expecting more negotiation on this.

The DUP and the ERG seem to be on board with the proposal meaning in theory Johnson might have numbers to get through parliament. Except its not a deal so this is currently meaningless.

Parliament is prorogued again from next week with the Queen's Speech the following week.

Apologies if I'm being thick (wouldn't be the first time) but Boris is proroguing Parliament for a Queen's Speech...is his plan for getting around the Benn Act to put No Deal in the Queen's Speech? That way if it gets voted through it's legal, and if it gets voted down it collapses the government, making it someone else's problem....

The problem for people who want to replace the backstop with "something" is that if they have such faith that "something" will obviate the need for the backstop, then they will have no issue with the backstop remaining. And there is absolutely no getting around the basic logic of that.

In fact we're straying into deja vu a little, since some of the moves we're seeing have been made before. Have we reached the symmetry of Brexit, where events just start repeating themselves ?

Does anyone recall the Star Trek:TNG episode where the Enterprise encounters a time loop, and is trapped repeating the last 24 hours indefinitely (until Data works out why the number "3" keeps occurring during the day .....) ?

Apologies if I'm being thick (wouldn't be the first time) but Boris is proroguing Parliament for a Queen's Speech...is his plan for getting around the Benn Act to put No Deal in the Queen's Speech? That way if it gets voted through it's legal, and if it gets voted down it collapses the government, making it someone else's problem....

I guess it's possible. But what are the implications of such a naked push for no-deal. Something moderate Tory Leavers should be horrified at ?

pigeon Voting down the Queens Speech doesn't automatically collapse the govt

Although normally the Opposition would immediately call a VoNC, they don't have to

BJ could choose to resign
This would force the rebels to choose a new PM - or they can't then it would be automatic No Deal and a November GE -
but he has said he won't

.... which means absolutely nothing from a congenital liar

Geek

(That was at DGR's Star Trek: TNG post. But it was a good reference! )

PMK thank you as always.

Fabian Zuleeg@FabianZuleeg (European Policy Centre, Brussels)

Yet again, dissonance about how UK government proposals are perceived
& how comments by EU27/institutions are interpreted.

EU27 commentators highlighting that the proposals won't fly
whereas most UK commentators suggest that they are a serious starting point for discussion

My conclusion on EU27 reaction to UK proposals:

behind scenes unanimous rejection of core elements (customs, consent): unacceptable & unworkable.

Many asking whether designed to be rejected?

But EU unwilling to accept blame so showing willingness to negotiate.
No basis for a deal

That's pretty much the assessment I made at 11.41 this morning after the first few sentences of BJ's statement to the HoC:

.....that the Brexiters (BJ included) consistently and probably deliberately confuse "diplomacy" and "politeness" for "acquiescence" and "agreement"

Tusk's response.....

As ever, wonderfully succinct, diplomatic and to the point.

Yet again, dissonance about how UK government proposals are perceived & how comments by EU27/institutions are interpreted.

Goes off and checks foreign media ... (I wish I could read German am I allowed to add my bits of French, Spanish and Italian up, and have a bonus for trying ?)

However, this is a sad day - terrible, terrible news from Paris .

I can sing Silent Night in German along with essential phrases such as "you have a big nose" and "I have two sisters." Oh and I can ask for directions to the post office but not understand the answer

Well there is "Schadenfreude" I guess. But as far as I am concerned that's an English word anyway*. So no QDos for using it.

And once we bottom out the pronunciation, Backpfeifengesicht will also become an English word . Although I think we might already have that word .... Borisjohnson and it's diminutive Jacobreesmogg

(I'm a fan of en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Nicoll :
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. )

We were told not to say Ich bin heiß or Ich bin Kalt whilst on the German exchange when we were 13, so I know what they mean! other than that it's guess work!

Re Paris: believed to be employee, no statement re motive.

Shocking incident.

Personally I find a great trick to help read other languages is to try and hear them in your head (although they don't half echo in mine).

As soon as I saw "Kalt" and heard it in my head, I thought "cold" ... which nudged me that "heiß" was hot. And a blast on Google translate meant I could feel smug for a second.

Just as long as I'm not expected to know if "Ich" is the right part of speech, or "bin" agrees with it, or indeed whether as a grammatically correct German sentence they make any sense whatsoever.

And if there's any idiom or slang going on, I'm all at sea. Presumably in Ein Boot ?

Reports here are that the employee had personal motives for the attack
No anti-terrorist police called in

DG You can sometimes guess the meaning of individual words, but prepositions and objects can change the meaning of the phrase or sentence

e.g. in the examples above, "heiß" would be "hot" in the sexual sense
and "kalt" could mean "cold" in the sense that you are a cooling corpse

ALso some words are v misleading,
e.g. the German word "Gift" menas "Poison"

A bit like the difference between "j'ai chaud" and "je suis chaud"

Important part of the proposal is ditching the "level playing field" regs that apply to every country in the SM,

e.g. rights for workers & consumers, environmental laws - regulations that all add to business costs

Jo Maugham QCC@JolyonMaugham*

This - ditching the "level playing field" provisions that protect workers and the environment - was always the real point of Brexit.

Amazing that some who pretend themselves Labour MPs would even contemplate supporting it.

e.g. in the examples above, "heiß" would be "hot" in the sexual sense and "kalt" could mean "cold" in the sense that you are a cooling corpse

I did already cover myself for that . And digging further into the Google results confirmed my sneaking suspicion there was going to be a linguistic minefield ahead that would make tu/vous look positively trivial .

One annoyance from my (Cambridge) latin days was we never learned the forms as dative, genitive, accusative etc etc, but "A form, B form ... E form". Obviously we never studied English in any detail at all (why would you) so I had to learn about the "-ives" from my DM. Who hated Latin and did her best to forget it (from it's compulsory place on a 1940s grammar school syllabus).

If you check out some of the "Life of Brian" YouTube clips (you know the one I mean ) there's a fascinating ongoing argument about "locative" ...

C'est les pieds !

Amazing that some who pretend themselves Labour MPs would even contemplate supporting it.

The fact that any Labour MP has gotten away with going through the same lobby as the Tories still amazes me. From Liverpool too.

Yep...

The perils of translation are why the EU has "Non-Papers" and snails are defined as Fish (Terrestrial).

Alex Wickham@alexwickham

Here is the blame game memo

— if Brussels refuses to negotiate on Northern Ireland customs, No10 will say the EU is "crazy" and has made a deal "impossible"
— it would be the EU that "ends negotiations" if this happens, Boris Johnson's aides claim

A Leaked Tory Memo Ordered MPs To Call The EU "Crazy" If It Rejects Boris Johnson's Brexit Proposals

www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/alexwickham/eu-crazy-leaked-tory-memo?

Stefaan De Rynck@StefaanDeRynck

I have read the memo a few times now about us being crazy, possibly.

I still do not understand who "everybody" refers to in that sentence