Seriously??? You left. Deal with it.

[LookItsMeAgain]

I'm getting seriously ticked off day by day by the UK government wanting X or Y or Z which were and are benefits of actually being part of the EU but not wanting to be part of the EU.

Today on BBC Breakfast in the news it's easier travel movement within the EU. Digital certificates to prove that you've been vaccinated has goes live today for all EU countries and lo and behold the UK wants it's piece of the pie and to be part of the easier travel movements.

Well....no. You left the EU. You're not part of it anymore. You don't get to enjoy the benefits of easier travel just because...you join the other countries that are not part of the EU and take your place in the queue.

Or

You rejoin the EU and play your part in these decisions and be a grown up.

It's just sooooo frustrating.

You do realise that the vaccines don’t stop the virus from circulating don’t you? They help stop people from getting seriously ill/dying.

The virus doesn't just circulate on its own, drifting on the breeze as it were, with no human host involved.

...ruled from Brussels by unelected foreigners

Ahem.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_to_the_European_Parliament

www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/23/the-european-council

europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/institutions-bodies/european-commission_en#composition

I suspect the problem with all of these scrupulously equal bodies and the composition of the European Parliament is that it was all a nail in the coffin of Rule Britannia. No more Top Dog position for the UK.

Meanwhile, the US has reminded the UK that the 'Special Relationship' was only useful as long as the UK remained in the EU, a fact which everybody else knew but which seems to have escaped the cream of the British public school system as represented in the Tory Party.

[quote Inastatus]@Peregrina - ok, you’re backtracking. In your first post you were claiming that the vaccine rollout isn’t successful because we have the Delta variant ‘running wild’.
The success of the vaccination programme has very much been helped by us not being in the EU and I disagree that we would be where we are now had we stayed in.

My friends have articulated many reasons they are happy with their leave vote.[/quote]
You do realise that some EU countries are now on a par with UK for vaccinations and some have ? There is no reason you couldn't be right where you are with vaccines if you were in the EU. Ireland has pretty much the exact same stats as the UK and the UK started vaccinating earlier than we did. One EU country has the highest rates of vaccination in the world.

Not to mention the fact that you would have been free to purchase your own vaccines had you still have been in the EU?

But sure, it was leaving the EU that did it for you.

The UK could have followed the same course of vaccine action if it were an EU member:
None of these successes can be chalked up to Brexit. As the chief executive of the MHRA swiftly pointed out, Mr Hancock was wrong to say that the UK could approve the vaccine early because it was no longer subject to EU rules. The MHRA’s decision was taken in accordance with the relevant EU legislation, which allows member states to grant temporary authorisation for a medicinal product in response to the spread of infectious diseases (among others). [1] This legislation still applies to the UK until the end of the transition period. Any EU member state could have used the same provision of the legislation to approve the vaccine. They decided not to for political and technical reasons, not legal ones.

Similarly, the member states were in no way obliged to take part in the EU’s joint vaccine procurement scheme. The EU has very limited competences for public health under its founding treaties: it can take action only to “support, coordinate or supplement the actions of the Member States”. The EU member states in this case voluntarily decided to opt into the joint procurement scheme. If one or more of them had decided to follow the UK’s path and procure its own vaccines, no one would have stopped them.

James Kane Institute for Government

Macron and Merkel will be gone soon.

Are you talking about the Macron who was supposed to have come in second to that darling of the Brexiteers, Marine lePen? The candidate who won by a decisive margin?

FYI, Merkel is retiring after a long and illustrious career. Her successor shows no sign of taking Germany off the rails.

That Merkel who has a doctorate in quantum chemistry, and has worked as a research scientist. But hey we have a clown in charge.

.the economies of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy can go hang
With so many Italians holidaying at home this year everything is pretty booked up. I've just got back from a holiday resort and for the first time we had to book a sunbed on the beach in advance as it was so full. Restaurants and hotels all seem really busy. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing was happening throughout the EU.

But the vaccine roll out was the big bonus of Brexit because the thoroughly discredited Hancock said so. Will Leavers be changing their arguments, or will they suddenly find they have lost their tongues?

Ah jayzus, yez are at it again!
I feel really sorry for the people of Northern Ireland who are being used as a political hockey puc between the newly departed UK and the EU.

The UK negotiated and agreed to the Northern Ireland Protocol. It's a legally binding agreement and now they want to shred that and renegotiate it...eh...not going to happen.

I don't see this as a Rep. of Ireland vs Northern Ireland situation and I think the British media is trying to spin it like that to stoke the fires of Unionism in NI, which is a dangerous thing to do.

The only land border the UK has with the EU now is the one between Northern Ireland and the Rep. of Ireland. Similarly the only border the EU has with the UK is the one on the island of Ireland. I know there is the Euro Tunnel but that is very different to what we're talking about here.

This is the UK wanting the benefits of being a member of the EU without being a member of the EU. Free movement of goods but that isn't going to happen. There was 4 years between the outcome of the referendum and the day that the UK left the EU but it appears that the documentation that would allow for the movement of goods between the UK, Northern Ireland and the Rep of Ireland was slapped together like a student doing their homework on a Sunday night at 10pm for school the following morning.

I really do feel though that the people of Northern Ireland are being very short changed by their own government. They voted to stay in the EU. They could clearly see what was looming in the distance.

You just cannot unilaterally decide to shred a legally binding agreement because you want to. It doesn't work like that