Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Brexit

Brexit Megathread - Part 2 because it's not over by a long shot

992 replies

vera99 · 07/10/2021 21:36

Well getting to a 1000 posts didn't take too long so here we are.... everybody welcome!

OP posts:
Thread gallery
40
vera99 · 12/10/2021 09:59

Just caught this on Twitter.

• Spain have just announced energy bills will fall by 22%

• France announce £100 energy vouchers & a cut from 12% to 4% in electricity rise

• Italy announce €3.5bn plan to protect poorer from energy rise

• Greece announce €108 pa vouchers

Meanwhile, UK does diddly-squat

OP posts:
HappyWinter · 12/10/2021 10:29

Does he go on holiday when there is a crisis, or does he just have a lot of holidays?

Good to see other countries are helping their citizens with high energy bills, it is a shame ours is applying the usual survival of the fittest approach.

rrhuth · 12/10/2021 10:32

@HappyWinter

Does he go on holiday when there is a crisis, or does he just have a lot of holidays?

Good to see other countries are helping their citizens with high energy bills, it is a shame ours is applying the usual survival of the fittest approach.

He has a lot of holidays, plus a lot of crises, so they are bound to overlap.

He's a proper lazy article Angry

dontcallmelen · 12/10/2021 10:35

@Peregrina

Where is Clavinova? I would like to see her try to mount a defence of Johnson't leadership.
Out probably whilst skipping on the sunlit uplands feeding the unicorns.
AuldAlliance · 12/10/2021 10:52

Please don't call for a c&pfest.

Peregrina · 12/10/2021 11:04

No, sorry, I shouldn't. It would be [PM of Where-ever] is also on his tenth holiday of the year......as though that excuses our own PM.

vera99 · 12/10/2021 11:34

Sorry for the Mail link but I'm lazy. Had occasion to use an Uber a couple of weeks ago - was a 30-minute wait with two drive-bys that didn't pick up. (Apparently, they don't know until nearly at the pick up where the fare is going). The fare surged from £28 to £38 in that period as well. First world problems I know but there you go (or don't as the case may be).

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10082965/Drinkers-face-THREE-HOUR-queues-taxi-home-cabbies-quit-Covid.html

OP posts:
FrankieStein403 · 12/10/2021 11:40

Does he go on holiday when there is a crisis, or does he just have a lot of holidays?

Surely the question is when (if) he has a work break?

R4 today this am Steve barclay pressed quite hard by amal wrt what was the excuse for the 6 week delay to the second lock down - serious squirming - interview started at 2:45 into programme.

Peregrina · 12/10/2021 12:00

Oh dear, it's all the Leader of the Opposition's fault, or responsibility. If that is the case, why don't the Tories step aside and let Labour form a Government?

vera99 · 12/10/2021 12:09

Read and weep... Angry

www.newstatesman.com/comment/2021/10/from-germany-the-uk-appears-ever-more-dysfunctional-and-absurd

Viewed from Berlin, Britain appears ever more dysfunctional and absurd. As last week’s Conservative Party showed, we are no longer ruled by a serious political party, but by a cult whose members must bow before their leader.

That leader has risen to, and sustains, power through simplistic slogans, empty promises and wolf-whistle politics. He uses Orwellian language to preach voodoo economics, somehow pretending that chronic labour shortages herald a glorious economic renaissance. He betrays the long-term interests of the country for the next day’s headlines.

Behind his fatuous jokes he trades in nastiness. He exploits peoples’ fears and prejudices. He foments social division to keep his base fired up. He seeks to undermine democracy by curtailing protests, bending the electoral system to his advantage, and weakening the courts, the media and any other independent institution that threatens to limit his freedom of manoeuvre.

He wraps himself in the flag while accusing his opponents of lacking patriotism. He shames Britain by denouncing awkward international treaties that he has himself negotiated, signed and hailed just months before. He consorts with autocrats while gratuitously goading our former friends in Europe. He professes to champion “the people”, but awards lucrative public contracts to his cronies.

“Global Britain”? Even as the Prime Minister and his fellow Brexiteers invoke Britain’s past glories, and cling to delusions of grandeur, they are running the country into the ground. Instead of praising Germany for the deeply impressive way it has atoned for its past, they prefer to emulate our football thugs and pretend the Second World War only happened yesterday. “My father, Reginald Francois, was a D-Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German and neither will his son,” the ludicrous Tory backbencher Mark Francois declared during the Brexit deadlock of 2019.

It gives me no pleasure to say it, but my daughter is right. She should raise her children in Germany rather than Boris Johnson’s increasingly debased Britain. As Kampfner wrote: “Germany is Europe’s best hope in this era of nationalism, anti-Enlightenment and fear.”

OP posts:
AdaHopper · 12/10/2021 12:10

@vera99

Just caught this on Twitter.

• Spain have just announced energy bills will fall by 22%

• France announce £100 energy vouchers & a cut from 12% to 4% in electricity rise

• Italy announce €3.5bn plan to protect poorer from energy rise

• Greece announce €108 pa vouchers

Meanwhile, UK does diddly-squat

I think the UK already has an energy prive cap for consumers (which is why all these small energy providers are going bust). So peole are more protected by that than the measures in other countries, no?

Here in Belgium my DMum is on a variable contract and her monthly cost has doubled.

vera99 · 12/10/2021 12:15

Yes, we do have a price cap at the moment for consumers, point taken but unless Sunak opens the coffers yet again for industrial producers some will have to close. We have to hope for a windy and not too cold winter apparently.

OP posts:
DuncinToffee · 12/10/2021 12:17

Just sharing Susie Dent's wisdom

Word of the day is ‘struthious’ (18th century): ‘ostrich-like’; used of those who fail to confront a crisis.

It’s one of many personality labels from the past that might take your fancy.

vera99 · 12/10/2021 12:20

Denial is a river in Egypt next to the Red Wall Sea. I must be going mad it's the £184 million Euromillions tonight and I've opened an online account.

OP posts:
Peregrina · 12/10/2021 12:45

This from Jon Danzig is worth sharing:

"Wages will rise; there will more jobs for young people
THE BENEFITS OF BREXIT
Brexit does have advantages, writes Chris.

  1. Wages will go up due to demand for jobs needing to be filled.
  2. Young people get an opportunity for a decent career and to earn some money."

But this argument is flawed, Chris.
There are not enough British workers to do all the jobs in Britain, which is why we need millions of migrants.
We simply don't have enough young Britons because we have a low birth rate and a rapidly increasing older population.
That's why we have to import young people (i.e. migrants).
Without enough workers to do all the work in Britain, businesses will decline or go under, increasing unemployment.
Wage increases cannot be sustained unless the economy considerably grows.
Brexit is already damaging business, making it more difficult to export to our most important export market, our neighbouring countries right on our doorstep (i.e. the EU).
It's exports that make the country better off; if exports are reduced, the country is poorer, meaning it cannot afford higher wages.
Brexit is making the country poorer.
Offering higher wages without the economy growing will cause enormous inflation.
It means as wages go up, prices go up, making the wage rise meaningless, as everything will cost more to buy.
Brexit offers no benefits to Britain; not even one.
Putting up barriers to trade with our neighbouring countries and making it difficult for workers from neighbouring countries to work here when we desperately need them, is destroying Britain.
And there is worse to come.

▪ Report and graphic by Jon Danzig
▪ Jon Danzig is an independent campaigning journalist and film maker who specialises in writing about health, human rights, and Europe. He is also founder of the information campaign, Reasons2Rejoin
#Brexit #EU #EuropeanUnion #jobs #migrants #freemovement #BorisJohnson

vera99 · 12/10/2021 13:20

Plus can't imagine many British youngsters queuing up to work in an abbatoir. In the Vera household, we are trying to give up meat but that's a different issue. Good article I have always been curious about the Guardian's Chief Economic editor who is a left Brexit supporter, Larry Elliot though have never bothered to dig deeper.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Elliott

OP posts:
Peregrina · 12/10/2021 14:01

Some of Larry Elliot's articles have been rather tortured of late as he desperately tries to pretend that problems are nothing to do with Brexit. The wikipedia link talks about a failure to produce more affordable homes. Since when was that in the remit of the EU?

Provision of more employment opportunities is slightly more debatable because in some areas we have been using immigration to hide skill shortages. But again, what has stopped us putting money into education and training? It wasn't the EU.

LouiseCollins28 · 12/10/2021 14:19

If UK businesses could rely on a supply of already qualified people to fill just about any role you can think of from across the EU where was their incentive to invest more in education and training? Peregrina

Absolutely true to say the the EU didn't "stop" such investment but I'd suggest it did render such investments largely uneccesary and not productive of a good return. If you could get an EU national in to do the job you wanted at £0 training cost because they were already qualified then why pay to train someone new? No sleight on those people for taking the opportunities either.

prettybird · 12/10/2021 14:34

Funny how France and Germany, also members of the EU, didn't "suffer" in the same way from these immigrants and have better productivity. Confused

Says a lot about the respective governments' strategies and their priorities and incentives for investment.

In other words, however you try to twist it, you can't blame the EU. You have to look closer to home.

DoubleTweenQueen · 12/10/2021 15:06

@prettybird

Funny how France and Germany, also members of the EU, didn't "suffer" in the same way from these immigrants and have better productivity. Confused

Says a lot about the respective governments' strategies and their priorities and incentives for investment.

In other words, however you try to twist it, you can't blame the EU. You have to look closer to home.

I've seen it implied that it is actually the EUs fault - I believe due to the fact there is disparity of wealth across the evil dysfunctional block, such that Eastern European member states sent people over to the UK to do seasonal and low skilled or unpleasant work - for a wage that was low but quite valuable in the context of lower cost of living back home. Or something like that, from what I can gather :) So it was , ultimately, the EUs fault that these jobs were lower-paid.

Now we're out of the EU, all these jobs will attract higher wages, because they no longer have any influence over our labour market, as the labour's packed off back home and the jobs left behind can now be rebranded as upskilling apprenticeships :D

Or perhaps I'm extrapolating wildly.

vera99 · 12/10/2021 15:06

As much as I loathe Cumming's he had a key role in the vax programme he and Vallance had a cunning plan took it to Boris who wasn't that bothered about the detail but just said do it. He would have probably agreed to hang fire and wait if that had been the advice. The point being that he never drills down into the detail and gets on top of his brief so I'm not going to give him even that 'success'.

news.sky.com/story/dominic-cummings-hearing-the-inside-story-of-the-timeline-of-the-weeks-before-covid-lockdown-12317517

24 March

Patrick Vallance texts Dominic Cummings about vaccines, saying he wanted to set up a vaccine taskforce outside of the Department of Health.

Mr Cummings said, even before that, experts - people like Bill Gates - were saying that it should be possible to create vaccines to tackle COVID, but Sir Patrick is the one who came up with the idea and deserves the most credit.

Mr Cummings said the approach of the people he was talking to - to build vaccine programmes in parallel - was something the traditional Whitehall accountancy processes "couldn't cope with", because they were not used to spending billions on something that might not work.

He said the programme went on to work because it had one person with overall responsibility, Kate Bingham, who reported to the PM, not the Department of Health.

He said there was little formal discussion about whether it should go ahead in the way it was suggested, the PM - when he came back off after being ill - signed off on it in "about 90 seconds"..

OP posts:
Peregrina · 12/10/2021 15:19

If UK businesses could rely on a supply of already qualified people to fill just about any role you can think of from across the EU where was their incentive to invest more in education and training?

I think the problem with your argument is that the UK has failed to invest in education and training for the majority, for far longer than we had FoM with the EU. Prior to this, with the Windrush generation for example, we were more than happy to take Commonwealth citizens to prop up our industries or NHS. This was the time when women were being pushed back to their kitchens to make way for the men returning from the forces, so it wasn't necessarily a shortage of bodies to do the work, but attitudes.

Peregrina · 12/10/2021 15:42

Is anyone surprised that Priti Patel seeks to right roughshod over international and domestic refugee laws?

One might just think that someone in her immediate family could have told her what it is like to get out from a regime that is hostile towards you. Although, note her family weren't refugees from Amin, having got out before, but they must know many who were in that situation.