Brexit MegaThread - part 14

[Peregrina]

Thread 13. We had a debate about whether there should be a new one but if no one answers this the whole series after 8 years plus will come to their end.

Brexit happened, although one time Leavers do not seem to appreciate this.
It's worth noting I think that Brexit was a Tory initiative and the Tory party has just received its worse electoral thrashing since 1832. Could it be entirely unrelated?

What next? A gradual rapprochement with the EU? A Norway style agreement?

Remember that the reason the UK lost access to the Galileo project (and still has no viable alternative, by the way) is because when it was constituted, one EU member made a fucking huge thing that it should only be open to EU members. To the puzzlement of all other members.

That EU member ? The UK.

Cue a few years grovelling and pleading with the EU to bend the rules to let us back in. To no avail. The words petard and hoist are somehow bound up in this story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)#International_involvement

And given we have just seen a very expensive firework in Shetland, the UK is going to have to learn the hard way that we are most certainly not equipped for a space programme without help.

I wonder how UK military systems get their GPS now ?

And loss of access to Galileo is more than a pity. We did in fact have a good Space industry.

But still Boris Johnson said "Fuck Business".

As part of a greater whole, yes. We did.

If you want to play who has the biggest, then it's sobering to see what countries are capable of what. In terms of space, then even the ESA are whole is decades behind the US, Russia, China, India and Japan. All of whom have managed the almost impossible of remotely landing and controlling a device on another planetary body - including the getting it there bit.

You want driverless cars* ? Then you need millimetre precision GPS. If you haven't got that, then you are all mouth and trousers.

*You want electric cars ? Then you need a grid and infrastructure that can support them. If you haven't got that, then you are all mouth and trousers. I really feel sorry for the airheads who genuinely believed they were the future with their fancy milk floats. Turns out they backed Betamax.

Betamax is a far suprtior system BUT VHS gor the 'marketing' right by recognising that buying the machines would also need films to be watched thus pandering to the 'never mind the quality, feel the width' brigade.
If Globe (or other Brexiteer) ever offers a cake I presume they will automatically hand you a FULL listing of every ingredient used to make the cake because so far NO ONE has yet explained EXACTLY which of the tens of thousands of bits of EU legislation tying the UK to the EU would be cut.

Screw "so what it's only 7 Euro", this isn't a mild inconvenience, it's absolutely fantastic and I fully support it!

Gives us the moral high ground as well. Either we don't charge for entry into the U.K. from EU countries on a reciprocal basis and we look more open, OR we do charge and (if we do) we should absolutely rinse our European neighbours.

Win win. another Brexit Benefit Klaxon 📢

And if we make the cost to our EU neighbours really high, it'll be like a beautiful wall......

I take it Louise does not run a business that is trying to recruit NMW type staff.

The million or so Hong Kongers are over qualified
The Ukranians are now heading home or over qualified
EU citizens are pretty much fully employed

And the cohorts of school leavers over the next five years are each due to be smaller than the last
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/ukpopulationpyramidinteractive/2020-01-08

6 pounds spread over three years is 2 pound per year. Well worth it for people like myself who travel in and out of the EU each week.

A standard UK passport lasts me a year maximum due to all the entry and exit stamps and costs 90 pounds. So, the new system of finger print checks will save me 88 pounds per year. Another Brexit bonus for the Globe.

The statement in the Times:

It will add two to three minutes processing time per passenger, compared with the present 45 seconds, experts estimate.

Is garbage. Many countries have photo and finger print check on arrival and they are done at the same time the person at the desk is checking the Visa in the passport.

EU citizens are pretty much fully employed.

Take a look at:

Unemployment statistics - Statistics Explained (europa.eu)

EU unemployment is 6% overall average.

UK is 4.2%

Unemployment - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

Hey Grok, I was talking about the UK,
your Algorithm is spitting out garbage again

LLM at work.

Is Grok any good? I have turned off the data sharing that was automatically enabled but not looked further into it

No idea.
It appears on the menu when I am on twitter
but as Elon does not get cynical sarcasm, its unlikely his programme will

"Moral high ground" my arse...

Open borders are now a good thing?

@HannibalHeyes

I think it can be safely said that your arse is not the moral high ground.

It's certainly much more of the moral high ground than any Brexshiteer!

Meat sector warns many firms 'in for a shock' due to new Brexit fee.

The maximum of '£145 per truck' claimed by ministers at the time could end up costing up to £870, the The British Meat Processors Association (BMPA)
says.

https://www.farminguk.com/news/meat-sector-warns-many-firms-in-for-a-shock-due-to-new-brexit-fee_65170.html

BBC finally acknowledges that leaving the EU has made the UK a third party country subject to third party rules.

The whole airplane repair saga is a subtly new Brexit issue that we'll see more of.

TL;DR is EU companies just won't bother getting "UK" accreditation for various sectors and industries as it simply isn't worth their while. It's not EU red tape that is the problem. IT's UK red tape.

On the Single Market, with the hole in our finances the UK has, Keir Starmer is just plain wrong. Imagine seeing your house burning down but deliberately refusing to make an arrangement to tap into your neighbours swimming pool ?

All 168 countries outside the EU are classified by the EU as third countries. They include:

USA
China
Japan
India

Imagine seeing your house burning down but deliberately refusing to make an arrangement to tap into your neighbours swimming pool

France has more swimming pools than the UK, but their economy is smaller than the UK.

Both Norway and Switzerland have GDP per capita that is more than the combined GDP per capita of France and Germany. Both Norway and Switzerland have said they will never join the EU.

Such an ironic username

Not as ironic as if it had "intelligent" in there somewhere. You'll see it caught the "swimming pool" words but was unable to put them into immediate context as - I imagine - it's not happened before in that corner of LLM land. Hence the drivel about France.

It's getting tedious now, but there is not anything you could remotely characterise as "AI" around at the moment. Just very fast, very clever pattern matching. It vaguely reminds me of the good Dr. Johnsons remarks on hearing a woman preach ...

"Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Little tip for anyone being pestered by "AI" flingers at work. Bring up page of google results and get them to "remove the crap" with their "AI". When they can't, ask what it can do. Because the answer will (eventually) be "put crap into search results"

And as we all know "AI" is shit as spotting "AI".

The world's biggest chip maker based in Taiwan is setting up a huge factory in Germany

Ursula a von der Leyen, "European industries will benefit from more reliable supply chains, and local supply chains"

"At a time of growing geopolitical tensions, TSMC will also benefit from geographic diversification to Europe. Better access to our European strengths, like automotive"

"And to our unique EU Single Market"

You mean they're not basing themselves in the thriving UK? Colour me shocked!