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Brexit

Westminstenders: Governing by U-Turn

999 replies

RedToothBrush · 07/09/2020 01:45

Johnson's determination to get brexit done and to have 'a clean break from Europe' on terms which involve other countries happily returning fishing rights they bought from us (without recompense for the said previous purchase) in addition to the EU accepting terms they don't feel create a level playingfield and risk their economic future make any deal impossible. Our demands simply aren't achievable.

The alternative is adherence to the Withdrawal Agreement in which we are unable to bail out businesses via state aid and to have no deal which creates huge trade barriers and tarriffs overnight and massive customs red tape which we simply are not yet prepared for because the systems for running this are running behind schedule. This would lead to massive food shortages and Brexit lorry parks throughout the country for the forseeable future.

Johnson's latest bright idea is that he seems to think he can avoid chaos by a strategy which would cause even more chaos by deliberately reneging on the withdrawal agreement which is an international agreement just months after throwing a hissy fit for China doing exactly the same thing. This wouldn't just be hypocritical but would make a mockery of our credibility internationally and potentially endanger every other international agreement we've currently in place because well, why should anyone else stick to an agreement with the UK.

We could face years of legal wrangles with god knows which countries and businesses suing the British government.

But y'know Johnson thinks this is a sensible strategy and a cracking plan to force Brussels to blink first rather than actually take the subject seriously and do something in the country's interest rather than prevent Johnson from damaging his internal reputation with leave voters and because he thinks this is the correct hill to die on to prove he doesn't govern by u-turn. Johnson's ego seems more important to him than feeding the nation and having an international reputation.

Or he could do another u-turn.

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Phoenix21 · 07/09/2020 16:31

Sorry to jump in - avid reader of this thread.

I’m fucking sick of this bullshit. A part of me wants the EU to respond ‘it’s cool, let’s not waste time and no deal in 2 weeks’ to get the torture over and done with.

Of course, a massive part of me likes living in a functioning country so I wouldn’t advocate the nuclear approach. Or want it, I don’t know if I’d survive it. But this torture needs to end.

DGRossetti · 07/09/2020 16:45

I’m fucking sick of this bullshit. A part of me wants the EU to respond ‘it’s cool, let’s not waste time and no deal in 2 weeks’ to get the torture over and done with.

Keep it to yourselves, but there has been a solid and reasoned decision way back in 2016 from the EU to use Brexit as a showcase of (a) it's strength in international negotiations and (b) to demonstrate to it's own members the benefits of being in a gang of 27, rather than a lone earwig of one (it would insult the beauty of lupine species to say "lone wolf" about the UK).

The more the Brexiteers make a big fuss over the nasty EU, the more respect they garner worldwide.

This isn't kite flying. It's what is happening.

If the UK has to resort to illegal actions in negotiations with the EU, then how scary are these guys ?

Remember: whenever you look at Brexit, you need to bear in mind the absolute moronic stupidity of anyone who thought it was a good idea. Either that, or they are lying.

DGRossetti · 07/09/2020 16:48

Flashes from the archive of oblivion (2018)

DGRossetti · 07/09/2020 17:12

It's interesting how Googly AI works, but I think I may have stumbled across the UKs strategy

WARNING - Language.

DGRossetti · 07/09/2020 17:20

Seems a theme is developing here ...

Westminstenders: Governing by U-Turn
bellinisurge · 07/09/2020 17:45

We just like complete twats. It's not a good look. Sometimes if everyone says you are being shit, you are actually shit.

Pepperwort · 07/09/2020 17:48

I keep saying I hope the EU remember eventually that not all of us voted for this. Even the Brexiteers would not, in the main, support this total destruction of old British identity. PMK.

DGRossetti · 07/09/2020 17:53

@Pepperwort

I keep saying I hope the EU remember eventually that not all of us voted for this. Even the Brexiteers would not, in the main, support this total destruction of old British identity. PMK.
The Brexiteers lost control years ago - only nobody told them and they are too thick to realise.

This looks like another idea from Lord of Chaos Cummings. Probably egged on by Gove and Murdoch - who would love for a lot of international treaties to go away in his pursuit of world domination. And trashing the UKs history is no big deal to them. Or indeed to most people in the UK. After all, it's not like many people really give a toss about it. Even on the WFH thread we're told that subjects like History will be dead in a few years time.

Remember how easy it is to use a knowledge of history to identify an "intellectual".

At my age I'd rather be killed for being an intellectual than live as a drudge.

RedToothBrush · 07/09/2020 18:17

So it turns out one of the teachers in my son's year was off school today and has gone for a test. No supply teacher. Instead two of the TAs have been filling in (I believe one was previously a teacher). The school are running year bubbles so its a little more manageable but worrying none the less. Its only the fourth day the kids have been back!

Where we will be in two weeks time will be interesting...

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GaspodeWonderCat · 07/09/2020 19:05

Peace of Utrecht

'Britain was the main beneficiary, Utrecht marking the point at which it became the primary European commercial power.[7] In Article X, Spain ceded the strategic ports of Gibraltar and Minorca, giving Britain a dominant position in the Western Mediterranean. Britain also received a monopoly over the asiento or slave trade between Africa and Spanish America.'

Foundation of the wealth of Empire (my italics and comment)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Utrecht

dontcallmelen · 07/09/2020 19:41

PMK as ever my sincere thanks everyone, I’m not angry, I’m not upset I’m just now extremely depressed & I truly fear the future.

Westminstenders: Governing by U-Turn
TheABC · 07/09/2020 20:00

I have always assigned unthinking laziness to Johnson. However, if he was malevolently evil and really wanted to break the UK for the hell of it, this is a solid path downwards.

BigChocFrenzy · 07/09/2020 20:27

BJ has no work ethic, indeed few ethics I can discern and is easily led

Hastings nailed it during the Tory leadership campaign:

Max Hastings: I was Boris Johnson’s boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/boris-johnson-prime-minister-tory-party-britain

There is room for debate about whether he is a scoundrel or mere rogue,
but not much about his moral bankruptcy, rooted in a contempt for truth.

BigChocFrenzy · 07/09/2020 20:34

This was an early character insight, from one not impressed by piffle or excuses...

Letter in 1982 to Stanley Johnson,
from Boris Johnson's housemaster at Eton, in 1982,

Rory Stewart reading it out at thr Royal Albert Hall:

“Boris really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier attitude to his classical studies
.......
Boris sometimes seems affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility
(and surprised at the same time that he was not appointed Captain of the School for next half):

I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception,
one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else.”

DGRossetti · 07/09/2020 21:00

www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/07/sterling-slumps-as-leaked-plan-stokes-no-deal-brexit-fears

At the outset of a tense week of negotiations between London and Brussels, reports that the UK government could backslide on the EU withdrawal agreement signed in January sent the pound tumbling on the international currency markets. In a shift that could push up the cost of imports to Britain if the sell-off is sustained, sterling fell about 1% against the dollar on Monday to trade below $1.32, and fell by a similar amount against the euro to below €1.12.

DrBlackbird · 07/09/2020 22:04

Johnson's ego seems more important to him than feeding the nation and having an international reputation.

^This and doesn't Cummings/Gove know exactly how to manipulate him. A very depressed PMK.

It the whole state subsidy insistence because they know that our taxes will have to prop up numerous businesses going down the pan from leaving the EU?

Emilyontmoor · 07/09/2020 22:18

It’s Cummings dream to be able to hold his head high amongst the Silicon Valley techies, but coming from behind Britain cannot be a tech big player without massive state investment. It is all in those blogs of his, a theory that if the U.K. is not part of this second industrial revolution it will be left behind as a vassal state on the coattails of the US and China. Hence we have to be free of the shackles of the EU and out if the ashes of the economy he will build a new tech superpower. Except he won’t....

I can’t help but think though that it is as much about his ego as economics, this is a boy that was excluded at school so he really wants to be in with the gang, hence the dress and the whole evil genius / misfit identity he desperately projects. The sidelining of the scientific mainstream likewise, he only has time for tech and Maths / modelling, he is completely blind to the potential of biomed / biotech. We are going to lose all that is good about Britain to feed Dim and Dom’s insecurity and narcissism....

OhLookHeKickedTheBall · 07/09/2020 22:31

@RedToothBrush

So it turns out one of the teachers in my son's year was off school today and has gone for a test. No supply teacher. Instead two of the TAs have been filling in (I believe one was previously a teacher). The school are running year bubbles so its a little more manageable but worrying none the less. Its only the fourth day the kids have been back!

Where we will be in two weeks time will be interesting...

Oh dear. Fingers crossed it's not COVID but doesn't bode well.

Mine started today. Farce wasn't the word for it. If all the social distancing plans they could have put in, they went for make all the parents huddle into the smallest space they could find and mix us with the school next doors parents (some of which do cross over in fairness). Were masks worn? About 3 of us. In an area with rising and edging to concern levels. They'll be blaming the parents soon enough though. School down the road did queuing and there were reports of people waiting an hour to get their kids. Perfectly sensible options available to avoid both at our school not taken. Not sure about the other schools infrastructure though, could be the best they can do.

Emilyontmoor · 07/09/2020 22:33

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/johnson-sees-no-deal-as-better-than-surrender-t5sf30chw “EU demands for a level playing field on state aid would stymie No 10’s ambition to build tech giants to take on the world“

DrBlackbird · 07/09/2020 22:45

Ahhh. Silly me. Here I was thinking they might give a toss for your average SME. Nope it's truly a bonfire of the vanities.

BigChocFrenzy · 07/09/2020 22:51

DG from this morning:
"I'd be mildly surprised if what's left of the civil service would allow themselves to collude in such a move."

The civil service have been thoroughly cowed:

They have been cut for 10 years, lost too much core expertise,
then Cummings got rid of several Perm Secs and had the Sav's aide removed by armed police
Then they see that dim suckups get promoted wildly, e.g. Frost's peerage after only a few months of mediocre work is a new low,

DrBlackbird · 07/09/2020 23:23

Here's some insight into how Covid presents differently in children. Not a cough. Instead fatigue, headache, and fever are the most common symptoms. How the hell are we to know the difference between Covid and flu without better testing facilities?

www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/07/fatigue-and-fever-most-common-covid-symptoms-in-children-study

RedToothBrush · 07/09/2020 23:58

[quote DrBlackbird]Here's some insight into how Covid presents differently in children. Not a cough. Instead fatigue, headache, and fever are the most common symptoms. How the hell are we to know the difference between Covid and flu without better testing facilities?

www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/07/fatigue-and-fever-most-common-covid-symptoms-in-children-study[/quote]
Theres lots of reports of test shortages going on.

Where i am the only way to get a test is via post or if you are prepared to drive at least 20 miles.

Last week the media was reporting on people being directed much longer distances than that.

If there was a problem last week and the number of positives has suddenly jumped and people are struggling even more to get tested, then there is one inevitable out come.

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BigChocFrenzy · 08/09/2020 00:19

and for the most vulnerable to this virus ...

Significant series of screwups in care home testing

Randox tests didn't meet safety standards and had to be stopped
Results taking 7 days, or sometimes staff can't even get tests
At least one documented case of this delay leading to a staff member infecting a resident
General chaos

Now the government have moved target for weekly staff tests back to 7 September (yesterday)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/07/uk-government-apologises-for-care-home-covid-testing-delays