Brexit Megathread Part 3: COP26 and beyond. The Empire is no more.

[prettybird]

The old thread is nearly full so as COP26 is in my home town, I thought I'd start the next one.

I'm not expecting anything wonderful from COP26. The selfishness that is Brexit will extend to the rich nations - or rather corporations, countries and cronies - not wanting to do anything that might actually cost them money or hurt their profits and having made their money on the back of the resources of the poorer nations (in some cases quite literally ), they'll expect them to pay the price for the riches of the West.

The deliberate mistranslation of France's letter to the EU will distract from real issues - but that's ok for BJ as he can then blame the perfidious French.

Nothing changes.

On US food standards and the FDA. (Bold type mine)

The US situation is worsened by the fact that the US government relies on the companies producing the products to prove their own guilt. As stated in a Natural Resources Defense Council report “no other developed country that we know of has a similar system in which companies can decide the safety of chemicals put directly into food.” The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with clear authority to regulate additives and animal drugs, does not have any authority over food itself. Instead, the FDA compiles a list of food and food ingredients that are Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS). By using these GRAS ingredients, food companies are essentially protected from lawsuits that could occur under US liability law. Again, the companies who sell the product are the ones recognizing the product as safe and the FDA, by adding the product to the GRAS list, provides the company blanket protection from litigation.
www.focusforhealth.org/the-american-food-supply-not-fit-for-european-consumption/

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@TheElementsSong

More broadly, I do wonder why the EU needs a space agency, especially when some more visceral problems are so acute across the continent?

This is such a hilarious "argument" that I can only believe it was written in jest.

I do wonder why [anybody] needs [anything but the bare bones of existence], especially when [any problem at all] are so acute?

We could try versions of this across MN and see how well they go down.

S&B: [humans][more than clothing made of torn sacks][global warming]

Food: [families][anything but bread and water][food poverty]

Property: [houses][floorboards][homelessness]

Christmas: [kids][more than one satsuma][pandemic]

Brexit: [TruBeLeavers][internet access to type hilarious arguments and inchoate rage at foreigners][the grown-ups are already struggling to solve grown-up problems]

🤣 Best post ever.

Meanwhile ...

@Octavia174

Yes, national standards are good enough, let all who wish to sell internationally put their goods (conforming to their own standards) into the marketplace and let the customers decide

So what your saying is UK car producers should, for example - try and sell left hand drive cars into Europe or 240v appliances to the USA?

Yes i'm sure importer networks will be banging on UK companies doors - not, you also seem to have ignored the fact that other countries regulators would ban these products from even being imported, let alone offered for sale.

I can only assume you are having a joke at our expense.

From time to time I put up posts that are a parody of Brexiteers. Either this is a very subtle attempt at the same by LC, or a genuinely held belief. Anyway, far more amusing than my parodies. Well played LC.

Mystery of why DWs wheelchair is still awaiting a fix solved

twitter.com/Danwhite1972/status/1410918081648594947

Which chimes with what the technician said when he attended with the third wrong spare part. Although apparently DW is lucky as at least her wheels can still turn.

(Just in case anyone had some strange idea I might be feeling sorry for the poor lickle Brexiteers)

We're well into the "it'll have to wait till after Xmas" phase of putting shit off now.

That must be infuriating, DGR. I wonder if Louise has any words of comfort for your DW?

See this is the problem, I think. What the EU says is that it doesn't want 'lower quality' produce coming from outside the EU into it's market
What I suggest the EU actually wants, is to protect EU producers, or more accurately to protect some EU producers, i.e. to protect them from competition

On food, its a bit of both, France likes its small farmers, using ancient machinery & a few cows, this needs to be paid for, tourists like it too! We like our hill farmers, same thing.
Its also a good idea if Europe can be as self sufficient as possible, the CAP, whilst a crude blunt instrument does that and its evolved since the days of intervention and butter mountains.

At a national level, I think that's OK...I don't really like it, I'd rather that on food producers competed in an open market place and consumers had more choice

Looked around any supermarket over the 40 years? choice has sky rocketed since out EEC/EU membership.
By enlarge though, we have not had too many food scare stories and most of those have been through criminality, rather than sub standard produce.
Unfortunately, whilst BJ has his organic food shipped in for free, we plebs run the risk of eating stuff we don't want too, purely because standards & labelling can and will be relaxed.

S&B: [humans][more than clothing made of torn sacks][global warming]

lol, I've been posting on a thread where someone was very underdressed for a specific occasion...

(Apropos of nothing).

However, national governments should be able to act to ensure food producers can operate, ideally to the level where the whole domestic population can be fed, but I understand that in the UK that's not been possible for many, many decades. National governments acting in the interests of their own producers and populations is fine, international actors doing the same is not IMO.

Where is the line between national and international producers? @LouiseCollins28

The agreed food standards are IMO nothing to do with consumer protection and everything to do with market protection. This idea that American foodstuffs, for example, are unsafe, do you really think the FDA is that negligent?

You're not fully aware of the fractured nature of US farm and food regulation thanks to the fact that the US is made up of 50 states, or the role played by agri producers and big processors, or by the lobbying industry in the field (pardon the pun).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 48 million Americans get sick from foodborne illnesses every year; 128,000 of them require hospitalization; and 3,000 die. The annual cost of those foodborne illnesses is $15.5 billion, according to an estimate by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/04/19/new-food-safety-law-gives-states-a-big-role

The gradual realisation dawns that producers are all in this together. States now facing a build from scratch of regulatory operations when it comes to fruit and veg.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/04/murky-deals-with-corruptistan-fast-becoming-quintessentially-british

@LouiseCollins28, I recommend you read this article.

Graeme Biggar, of the National Economic Crime Centre, said a “disturbing proportion” of criminal money from the old Soviet Union is “laundered through UK corporate structures”. Companies House, meanwhile, has become a front organisation for organised crime. So welcoming is it to criminals that 335,000 of its listed companies do not reveal the name of their beneficial owners. And 4,000 of the names it appears to reveal turn out on close inspection to belong to children aged two or under.

Last month, Professor Sadiq Isah Radda, a Nigerian anti-corruption official, encapsulated the consequences of the UK’s tolerance of theft. An opponent of corruption in Nigeria, home to countless online scams? A joke figure, you might think. But Radda spoke with a seriousness no government minister can muster when he said the UK was “the most notorious safe haven for looted funds in the world today”. The corruption we facilitate destablised Nigeria and, he might have added, many other countries besides...

...(The willingness to allow private and state criminals to launder their wealth anonymously through the prime London property market was Radda’s main charge against Boris Johnson.)...

...Britain has benefited so greatly from the wealth of the corrupt we may soon be at the stage where we cannot afford to clean ourselves up...

...You cannot profit from economic crimes committed abroad while enjoying the rule of law at home. The presence of the global plutocracy’s valets at the top of government and society shows the UK no longer even bothers to pretend that it can.

Farming Today: “there won’t be a pig industry by next summer” says a spokeswoman.

George Eustice being useless again “we’ve done everything they asked”

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00127lp

When I went to Portugal last month many of my fellow passengers ended up waiting 45 min + at Faro.
I with an Irish passport cleared passport control in 5 min. It wasn’t discrimination - there were three “other” passport kiosks open (at 21:30) and only one EU. It was just the about 95% of passengers were British, so the long queue.

Re the country being able to feed itself. It's not for decades we haven't been able to do this, it's getting on for a couple of centuries. The aim now is food security, making sure the supply lines are safe. And Johnson, Truss et al. and whoever replaced Truss when negotiating Trade deals may well babble on about a 'tilt to the Pacific' i.e let's big up the White Commonwealth, but the last war should have taught them just how vulnerable merchant shipping was to enemy action, so relying on food from the opposite side of the globe is stupidity. So instead, they pick as many quarrels with the neighbouring countries who do supply much of our food.

Mishal Husain really grilled Kit Malthouse on R4 this morning.

I heard that, good for her

As well as being dunces when it comes to geography and history, it seems the Tories don't know how to read a calendar.

Raab opined that the Police don't investigate crimes more than a year old, laughable in itself, but today is only the 6th December, so even if that were true, they still have 10 working days to get a prosecution started.

@Peregrina

As well as being dunces when it comes to geography and history, it seems the Tories don't know how to read a calendar.

Raab opined that the Police don't investigate crimes more than a year old, laughable in itself, but today is only the 6th December, so even if that were true, they still have 10 working days to get a prosecution started.

So if my husband pisses me off the Christmas and I decide to off him I just have to hide the body for a year and then I'm home free?

So if my husband pisses me off the Christmas and I decide to off him I just have to hide the body for a year and then I'm home free?

This is presumably Raab wishing away the crimes he and others committed in the pandemic in fraudulently awarding billions of pounds worth of contracts to companies that did not exist the day before.

I suspect that Raab hasn't thought that far. He's just trying to make excuses for why Downing Street i.e Johnson, Sunak and all the others broke the rules.

@Peregrina

I suspect that Raab hasn't thought that far. He's just trying to make excuses for why Downing Street i.e Johnson, Sunak and all the others broke the rules.

Why would he need to make excuses.

But Jeremy Corbyn.

Same old ..same old!

"It was over 12 months ago" "I am concentrating on saving lives right now" "People want me to focus on vaccinations" "Its a media only story" "Westminster bubble"

They've seen what Trump could get away with and are fast learners.

"It was over 12 months ago"

No, almost 12 months ago. Hence my wondering if they understand how calendars work.

@Peregrina

"It was over 12 months ago"

No, almost 12 months ago. Hence my wondering if they understand how calendars work.

I have heard ministers (i think it was BJ) saying it was "over 12months ago" they do this not because its true (its not) but to put even more distance between now and the offending xmas party in peoples minds.

They now that a lie can easily become fact if repeated often enough.

A lot of people have this sort of problem when calculating time. Here’s an example where someone’s DH thought that if a shop was closed between 12 and 2, it was closed for three hours.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3895552-To-not-be-able-to-agree-on-this-simple-question?msgid=96085254#96085254

I teach maths to adults and see this more often than you’d think. I don’t know if I’d class Raab as an adult though.