Westministenders: Unilateral Ignoring of WHO rules

[RedToothBrush]

Where we are:

On 1st January the EU started to apply checks on all goods from the UK coming into the Union.

However the UK decided to take a slower route to this, and planned that on the 1st April the UK we would be carrying out Sanitary & Phytosanitary paperwork for animal and plant EU imports like meat and eggs.

Then on 1 July we'd implement a full customs check on all goods arriving into the UK from EU member states.

Obviously we've struggled with exports as we weren't ready for this and its fucked business. But ultimately the import side of things has yet to hit the shit fan still.

It sounds like there is likely to be issues with imports of food in particular, so there is talk of delaying our plan of checks until later in the day. There is concern that the reopening of pubs and restuarants which will up demands of imports occuring at the same time as checks are put in place is likely to be 'problematic'.

Remember we get 2/3 of fruit, veg and cheese from the EU. And half our wine. And to date these largely have only been affected by haulage issues NOT UK customs issues...

You might want to keep that in mind.

As for riots, there were some in Bristol which were reported, but not much reported about the Newcastle protest the other day.

There were a lot more riots in the early 80s than you will find reported at the time of the Brixton/Toxteth/Handsworth excitement.

Freeports failed last time and were quietly scrapped.

FullFact -

A 2005 paper from a UN body said: “The [European] Commission does allow the establishment of free zones within its territory but its definition of free zone is a very narrow one.”

fullfact.org/europe/free-ports/

Southampton had a Freeport last time around.
Utter shambles.
Freeports move jobs - they do not create them.

The only thing that reliably increases jobs
is reducing barriers to trade
which is the opposite of Brexit

ho hum

Freeports move jobs - they do not create them.

And decrease tax take.

Win win for someone (not the UK tax payer though).

Freeports move jobs

10 March 2021 -

More than 2000 jobs will be created at a new Teesside wind turbine blade manufacturing plant that will see the area help “build a new, clean, green and brighter world”, it has been revealed.

Officials say it will create 750 direct jobs and a further 1500 supply chain posts, adding Teesside beat off competition from a French site to house the plant.

The announcement – hailed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a key facet in driving the UK’s “green industrial revolution” – comes just days after Teesside was named the largest UK freeport in Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Budget.

Reacting to the announcement, George Rafferty, chief executive of NOF, the North East-based national business development organisation for the energy sector, said: “This is a clear signal of what the freeport strategy can do for the UK energy sector and the potential it will bring for the local supply chain.

netimesmagazine.co.uk/news/more-than-2000-jobs-to-be-created-in-new-ge-renewables-energy-teesside-wind-turbine-blade-plant/

Re George Orwell - I reread 1984 with DD a month or so ago and was even more chastened by the parallels with the last decade than i was when i last read it in maggies time.

The only thing he missed was the way social media means you don't have to go back and change the historical record - you just propagate the new lies. Even the rotating 'wars/treaties ' with eastasia, eurasia etc have uncomfortable parallels. "Down with Big Brother" and the "Bollocks to Boris" badges I was happy to wear served the same role and had the same non-impact.

10 March 2021

More than 2000 jobs will be created

Yes well, let's see what 2022, 2023, 2024 etc bring and the ONS can record actual jobs created nationally, not jobs which might be created, or might be moved from A to B.

Then there is a query about what the actual jobs are - if they are good quality jobs or whether they are insecure zero hours stuff.

Flags are the latest squirrels.

twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1374113198912237572?s=20

Auld are you against the French flag or is it just the Union flag? You live in France and the flag is flown on many government buildings. Or were the French atrocities in Africa of no consequence?

Or is the truth that you hate Brexit and therefore Boris and therefore the Union flag because he wants us to fly it because, like me, he is proud of our country.

Yellowspanner
The flag is not the problem
its the abuse of it by shit politicians that is the problem.

I've sworn allegiance to the Queen to get my passport.
You didn't

I am very concerned about the way flags, in the UK and France ( I can't speak for other countries), are increasingly used to exacerbate populism. Jame's Wild's inane questions about how many flags should appear on the BBC's annual report are part of that. And are a pointless distraction from serious issues.

My disapproval includes the recent French legislation on flags in classrooms - the reasons for that legislation are depressingly obvious.

I think France has a huge problem facing up to and dealing with its colonial past and atrocities, not only in Africa but elsewhere. There are numerous aspects of French culture that I find hard to stomach.
That doesn't make me anti-French, any more than pointing out that the current UK PM is an inveterate liar makes me anti-British or English.

I called out the unpleasant anti-French attitudes increasingly prevalent on MN in recent days on another thread (in case anyone was wondering why yellowspanner is interrogating me on the basis of that one link).
However, incredible thought it might appear, I'm actually capable of criticising both anti-French attitudes AND the aspects of the current French gvmt's policies which I oppose (and there are a fair few of those, but MN is not really the forum for discussing the finer points of French domestic policy, for obvious reasons).

HTH

This flag flying business is certainly getting out of hand. At the moment the flag is flown on Government buildings for the birthdays of senior royals, the anniversaries of queen's accession and coronation, commonwealth day and remembrance Sunday, plus the saints days in the respective nations.

So if it's flown every day, the senior royals don't get their commemoration?. Or do we run up an extra large flag to show this?

The French I think tend to fly flags more. They also have annual commemorations of VE day, which would have been something we could usefully have done.

Or do we run up an extra large flag to show this?

One pole:two flags ?

One pole:two flags ?

So it's the Queen's birthday - I think both are commemorated, her real one and her official one. So we add an extra Union jack do we?

So we add an extra Union jack do we?

The TruBrit BeLeavers run these up their own flagpoles?

I disapprove of all excessive flag-waving, especially when used to distract from serious failings of government. That applies to the UK, France, my native Netherlands and any other country that uses these tactics. Doesn't mean I hate any of those countries - what a pathetic childish implication to draw! - but I disapprove of the things they are doing.

Loving your country does not mean uncritically approving of everything it does - quite the reverse, in fact. Loving your country means speaking out from the desire to make your country better.

Flag rules
www.theukrules.co.uk/rules/legal/flags/index.html

I grew up with allegiance to the flag
I've always had dual allegiance

I find the current xenophobic jingoism of certain MPs DEEPLY unpleasant

LQ,
How can a politician abuse a flag....tear it up, stamp on it? 🤷‍♀️

How do you know whether or not I swore allegiance to the Queen to get my passport?
I didn't realise you thought that you knew me. You clearly don't.

Yellow
How do you know whether or not I swore allegiance to the Queen to get my passport?
So you are an immigrant too.
Cool.

How can a politician abuse a flag....tear it up, stamp on it?
Bless

So a major health crisis, the mess that Johnson and cronies have made of Brexit and they get their knickers in a twist about a flag!

What on earth would anyone make of it all if a Labour Government was trying on such nonsense?

What is the betting that the flags which they are desperate to display hanging limply in corners, were made in China? I think we should be told.

as I have told you before on similar threads, the GFA is silent on the issue of a border.

This is because the border is an issue that nobody dared to tackle at the time of the GFA or since then, certainly not in the context of the Brexit referendum or in the confusion afterwards.

Certain elements of the reality of the border changed as a result of the GFA all the same. It became seamless and invisible, as opposed to manned and bristling with checkpoints, watchtowers, barbed wire, blown up bridges, etc.

It remains a border that makes no sense from a geographical or economic pov, or even a societal pov. It's an artificial, purely political construct, the unwanted child of cowardice and cynicism, dating from a time when Imperialists settled matters by taking rulers and drawing straight lines on maps.

There will come a time when the border question can't be kicked down the road any more.

...why are you pushing the independence propaganda then? The independence crowd are just as brain washed as the Brexiteers. They're fuelled by anti English sentiment just as the Brexit mob are fuelled by hatred of 'Europe'

There's nowt wrong with any of that as an operational basis as long as the basic premise - that independent Scotland could survive as an economic and (fairly) socially cohesive entity - is correct.

You can't demand purity and perfection of motive or maneuver from politicians. Most have made mistakes. Certain politicians have strayed way too far across multitudes of lines for their entire careers and it is very hard to discern their appeal; bottom feeding has never been a dignified occupation.

Politics never promised to be squeaky clean. It's the art of possibility and its participants are mere mortals.

Was it Evelyn Waugh who wrote a savagely cynical novel entitled 'Put Out More Flags'?

mobile.twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1374438210315513864

container ship stuck in suezkanal causing massive shipping delays.

just what's needed right now.