Westministenders: The Beginning of Negotiations

[RedToothBrush]

Transition has a few hours left.

Then negotiations start and trade stops.

Far from being over, there are huge numbers of issues that lay unresolved.

And businesses both now in the UK and EU will cease to trade with each other just because the red tape is such a pain.

So whilst people will celebrate and think things are 'done' that just shows how much people are paying attention.

It will be interesting to see people gradually realising what has been lost...

@Peregrina

Happy New Year,

The struggle continues. But now the Brexiters have finally realised their brexit, I expect to see the benefits start arriving in short order.

I am not sure what I will say to a friend who voted leave and whose son is a musician, who had done gigs in France and Italy. I don't think it will need rubbing in that her vote has helped to ruin her son's livelihood.

Its fine. They can get a viable job instead.

Their next job is in IT isn't it?

Happy new year from Spain. Still can't quite believe what the UK has done.

@HannibalHayes

Their next job is in IT isn't it?

Nope. A call centre.

Happy New Year everyone. I thought of you all at 11.

Very relieved at the new thread PMK but a slightly sad new year at the final push away from the EU.

Well happy New Year.

I have to admit I started 2021 seriously impressed by the drone display in London on the BBC.

This cynic was - for once, briefly - inspired.

Have listened to fireworks
then watched InBetweeners
now sleep

Tomorrow is another day
And I know that this was used on another thread
but its a cracker

Happy new year, folks! After 4 & a half years of reading your posts, I feel I almost know you! Thanks for all your intelligent observations and humour - it’s been good to know I’m not alone (my friends/family don’t feel as strongly as me about their European identity.) I hope these threads continue.

I think it was David Allen Green who said (3 years ago?) that the very minute we leave, the mandate of the referendum has been discharged, and we can legitimately start the campaign for re-entry. The ERG didn’t give up for 30 years. Nor should we.

Maybe we won’t be full members again in my lifetime, but I hope we achieve a close, trusting and mutually beneficial relationship.
I find it painful to think of the freedoms and benefits my kids won’t have. (Things I probably took for granted.) So I’m going to work on believing that we can get some of it back.

Thanks Red - I’m another who hasn’t commented to date but remember following your threads for facts throughout. Sent the led by donkeys star to my friends in Europe as part of NYE messages. Sad but resigned.

@HannibalHayes

Anyone notice that London Bridge was doing Blue and Yellow?

Excellent trolling Sadiq!

Yup 🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺

I always find this song uplifting. The lyrics are somewhat defiant though so not playing to the gov wish for unity with Brexiters. Ah well, still a great tune.

Happy New Year. The road back has started...

m.youtube.com/watch?v=SJSaRw1vjxM

And for you too Geistohne and for everyone else feeling sad tonight (which is all of us, I suppose).

Happy New Year to all. A few fireworks going off round here too, but then there always are on NYE so I’m trying not to make any assumptions.

Just skimming the abstract about Erasmus, the underlying problem is that the children from the lower socio economic backgrounds tend to chose the less prestigious universities, which in turn have less involvement with Erasmus.

So I could rephrase my question. The Tories have been in power for ten years now. What Government initiatives have we seen in that time to encourage disadvantaged students to widen their horizons and aim for the more prestigious universities?

My dgds University choices were ALL RG unis. She never contemplated lesser ones. She is classed as 'deprived' ( but has never been) and her mum a single parent on minimum wage has managed with my little bit of help to ensure she got to a top uni.
She is on a course where in her third year she will go to South Korea to study and the tuition fees will be paid to her uni and the accomodation costs are a third of what she has to pay now. There has been no mention of Erasmus as like most top unis they have their affiliated unis abroad.

think it would be great for more young people to learn Mandarin or Japanese or Korean, but we have to be honest about the likely returns on investment: these are very difficult languages even for gifted learners.

Yes agree very hard languages to learn as both my DD and myself have had to put up with attempts made by Dgd to learn Mandarin herself and Korean since age 11! But she starts a free 3 month course on Mandarin alongside her degree in March at uni!

PMK Happy New Year!

Just woke up to our first day of World-Beating ToryBrexitannian Buccaneering.

I can practically smell the Glorious Abstract Nouns that were previously denied us. Oops, sorry, that was the cat litter tray - my mistake.

Still, I'm sure some amazing stuff is just waiting behind this New Year's door.

Any campaign for re-entry is an open goal for the 'get over it' brigade - so i dont think that begins now.

What we do is eat the elephant one bite at a time. Discrete agreements as and when the need becomes generally accepted - in a decade we might have the core of what has been lost - the cost benefit won't be as positive as it was but...

I agree @FrankieStein402 .

@Sostenueto

think it would be great for more young people to learn Mandarin or Japanese or Korean, but we have to be honest about the likely returns on investment: these are very difficult languages even for gifted learners.

Yes agree very hard languages to learn as both my DD and myself have had to put up with attempts made by Dgd to learn Mandarin herself and Korean since age 11! But she starts a free 3 month course on Mandarin alongside her degree in March at uni!

DS's primary school do it (did it prepandemic) from age 6.

As soon as it starts again he will be signed up.

Happy New Year everyone.

the cheeriest most uplifting song you can think of

'feeling lost and feeling blue It's the end of the party...'

pmk

Discrete agreements as and when the need becomes generally accepted - in a decade we might have the core of what has been lost - the cost benefit won't be as positive as it was but...

I note that the Heil has already moved on to vaccination on its front page. As far as I am concerned, it's a right wing project, the right wing can make a success of it. Leavers who whine in my hearing are already being reminded that this was what they voted for.

So I could rephrase my question. The Tories have been in power for ten years now. What Government initiatives have we seen in that time to encourage disadvantaged students to widen their horizons and aim for the more prestigious universities?

Quite. I have to keep banging the same drum - it’s about money, and the more impoverished the ordinary people of this nation become the fewer choices and freedoms they will have. No matter how intelligent you are, no matter how well you do in school, if you are financially on your own at 18, or even 16, you are not going to be worrying about whether you should elect to study mandarin at Oxford or German at Cambridge. ChAnces are you’ll be estranged and alienated from that high-class impracticality anyway, and be more interested in just getting a job that will pay the bills.

Further chances are that you will not be getting information about where such courses will lead to either.

Fine words and hand wringing from high class people will not take away practical blockers in real life. We need redistributed economics, and better real opportunities that do not incur costs. Everything the Tories have been taking away for 40 years plus.