Brexit mega thread part 4 : non goady thread : Christmas edition

[Opal8]

Hi,

Longtime lurker and poster (under various nn) on Westminstenders and these threads.

I'm afraid the other thread op pissed me off a lot so here's another option for those of us that want one.

Wishing you all a Happy Christmas and good luck for 2022.

Polling in the Tories new former Red Wall seats is looking cheerful though - would the Tories risk a late 2022 election unless things start going very, very well both with COVID and the economy?

Good take downs/ridicule here of Edwina Currie's inane and fatuous claim that a benefit of Brexit is the "freedom to give Brussels two fingers"

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/watch-edwina-currie-ridiculed-for-naming-one-benefit-of-brexit-306809/

Strangely enough, I read about the potential loss of Red Wall seats in the Irish Press. I won't bother to wonder why it wasn't UK news - but it will have got the Tories rattled.

I hope they are right - 100 Red Wall seats reclaimed by Labour and 40 Tory seats falling to the LibDems would be a very satisfactory start. We would just then need the parties to stop playing silly buggers and forming a proper coalition (excluding Johnson Tories of course), so that the country could be put on a better footing again.

I think the fact this is a Tory Brexit is - like snow - starting to stick to the Tories. It will be interesting how they will try to wriggle out of it.

We already know they have an it's your fault for voting for it strategy ready to run with. Which is probably best deployed in the wake of Boris Johnson departing number 10.

Who knows ? Maybe we'll all wake up next season to find it was all a dream ?

""Who knows ? Maybe we'll all wake up next season to find it was all a dream ?"

Let's hope so !
tenor.com/view/dallas-bobby-ewing-good-morning-dream-patrick-duffy-gif-12093414

@pointythings

Polling in the Tories new former Red Wall seats is looking cheerful though - would the Tories risk a late 2022 election unless things start going very, very well both with COVID and the economy?

How can it? Tax rises and high energy costs cannot be mitigated by dropping vat and green levies. Plus the surging NHS waiting lists....

Bojo is now a figure of fun and ridicule, i doubt that perception can be turned around very quickly, unless he starts a war?

Such a shame for leave.eu

https://www.politico.eu/article/thousand-website-taken-offline-brexit-domain-name-change/?

Maybe one of our EU citizens on here could buy it. Happy to chip in if necessary.

@ICouldHaveCheckedFirst

Maybe one of our EU citizens on here could buy it. Happy to chip in if necessary.

I think a far more serious and pressing issue would be US steel tariffs ?

www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/vote-leaves-dark-ads-shame-uk-steel-set-to-suffer-from-eus-tariff-free-agreement-with-us-306870/

Notice this doozy of a clause : British exports to the EU could also be hit because of an unusually strict clause in the EU-US agreement that means steel originating in the UK will still attract the tariffs even if worked on and exported by EU companies.

Basically for all Frostie and Boris big balls bluster, the EU has quietly stitched the UK up, like a (U)Kipper. With the added sting that a lot of English speakers in the EU would get that reference too.

Still, at least they sorted out the musicians problem. Well, with one country out of 27.

www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/music-tours-uk-eu-musicians-brexit-spain-306861/

The steel deal story has hit the mainstream now as it featured on the lunchtime news and is on the BBC site.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59857275

[quote WorriedMutha]The steel deal story has hit the mainstream now as it featured on the lunchtime news and is on the BBC site.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59857275[/quote]
Be curious to see how they hide that little clause meaning that UK exports to the EU are also covered ....

Maybe Kate could cough a bit ?

I also note the UK has dropped it's threats or a war with the US. Probably for the best given how 1776 went.

I like the last sentence in that BBC article

"But in matters of trade, many things are easier said than done."

Paywalled, but the fact it's in the Telegraph speaks volumes:

"Time is running out to prove Brexit is not a historical failure..."

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/01/04/time-running-prove-brexit-not-historic-failure

Sounds like a note of panic?

@TheABC

Paywalled, but the fact it's in the Telegraph speaks volumes:

"Time is running out to prove Brexit is not a historical failure..."

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/01/04/time-running-prove-brexit-not-historic-failure

Sounds like a note of panic?

I'd say it's worse than that.

I'm just imagining people at Telegraph Towers bewildered that Dyson and Martin haven't single handedly rescued project Tory Brexit

(Yes, whenever you type "Brexit" in 2022, make sure it is always prefixed with "Tory". Just to make sure history and Google are accurate).

Time is running out to prove Brexit is not a historic failure

It's been five years since the referendum. 2022 is the year reality needs to match the hype

...

Still, in the spirit of telling others what to do, here’s a new year’s pledge for Boris Johnson. Prove to the people of this country – both Brexiteers and Remainers – that Brexit isn’t destined to become a historic failure.

...

The Government too seems to have tacitly acknowledged such frustrations with a press release to mark the end of 2021 that promised “to build on Brexit achievements in 2022”. Coming just as several trade bodies warned that new customs checks would wreck imports from the bloc, with one predicting they would become “more expensive, less flexible and much slower”, it was comically bad timing.

(contd)

Starmer says 2022 is the year when the UK needs to make Brexit work. How??

Oh dear, it appears that Tory Brexit has caused delays in getting vaccines passed for 5 to 11 year olds. So much for vaccines being the one thing Brexshittiers thought they could crow about

Pfizer has said it approached the MHRA only after the EU’s European Medicines Agency (EMA) completed its process for the age group.

Starmer says 2022 is the year when the UK needs to make Brexit work. How??

Is he trying to be clever here? If it completely fails Johnson and chums will blame everyone else, including Labour and the EU. If he makes a show of trying to make it work then this charge might not stick.

Or is he just trying to win the 'Red Wall' back making the assumption that a majority are a load of xenophobes? Stupid if so, I am quite sure a lot aren't.

Tory MP, Daniel Kawczynski has spent £22k of Govt money on polish lessons

£22k

He’s Polish

With a Polish mother tongue

Then consider Labour MP, Rosena Allin-Khan spent just £234 to learn another language

This is fraud

Trouble is nothing at all will be done about it.

Conversation on twitter that about sums up the direction of travel re: Brexshit;

Mujtaba (Mij) Rahman
@Mij_Europe
For those crystal-balling on Brexit this year, the direction of travel has been set by
@BorisJohnson

• the reason @DavidGHFrost left

Bottom line: avoid a trade war at all costs, which = no A16 or spinning out of negotiations. Within that there'll be bumps, but that's big picture

David Henig
@DavidHenigUK
I'd add a couple of things to this. First, this direction of travel was effectively set by the PM in October 2019 and has been confirmed periodically since. And second, that's because no UK PM could survive a trade war with the EU, and diplomatic tension with the US.

The Conservative cargo cult of the pure deregulatory Brexit is too strong for a PM to ignore entirely, but too detached from reality to be followed as the basis of a country's trade and foreign policy. And managing that tension is causing increasing ruptures.

Well, knock me down with a feather!

Who, on these threads, would ever have dared predict that the UK's new customs IT system would not be entirely perfect?

“There’s no-one to go to help,” Panayiotou said in a phone interview. “You’ve just got drivers stuck at port, unable to move.”

@HannibalHeyes

Well, knock me down with a feather!

Who, on these threads, would ever have dared predict that the UK's new customs IT system would not be entirely perfect?

“There’s no-one to go to help,” Panayiotou said in a phone interview. “You’ve just got drivers stuck at port, unable to move.”

Years ago I recall reading a Graun article listing the many many govt IT projects that ended in failure running into hundreds of millions of pounds. Just what is it about this country’s civil service that it can’t do successful tech?

.

@Sostenueto

Tory MP, Daniel Kawczynski has spent £22k of Govt money on polish lessons

£22k

He’s Polish

With a Polish mother tongue

Then consider Labour MP, Rosena Allin-Khan spent just £234 to learn another language

This is fraud

Trouble is nothing at all will be done about it.

mother tongue is/can be very different to fluid language. often if is 'just' spoken, not written or informal family language but not enough to conduct business or medical appointments etc.

the reimbursement is another issue though.

I'm sorry, but how much business does Kawczynski need to conduct in Polish? It sounds like a poor excuse. I imagine that if he has some Polish constituents his mother tongue will be perfectly good enough to communicate with them.

That assumes that he wants to communicate with constituents - but with the present lot, you have to wonder if that is so. I am just looking forward to see a flood of them stepping down when the next election is called.

From that Bloomberg article: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the government body responsible for administration at the border, said in a statement that it’s aware of a “small amount of user error issues with some of the new customs processes as traders and haulers adjust to the new controls, which we expected and are addressing.”

If they expected and are addressing the "user error issues" , why is HMRC needing to do anything? Surely it's the users' responsibility I smell shite