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In or out?

...on serious topics that don't fit anywhere else at present.
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Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2801 Post by Alan H » December 8th, 2017, 8:55 pm

Latest post of the previous page:

The phase 1 deal: initial thoughts
The most obvious feature of what has been agreed is that in all but a few minor details Britain has accepted all the terms set out by the EU at the beginning of the negotiations. That was always inevitable unless we simply pulled out of the talks and committed national suicide, and it would have been far quicker and squandered less goodwill had the government accepted it on day one. That they did not reflects the glacial pace at which Ultra Brexiters have to be forced, piece by piece, to face reality.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2802 Post by Alan H » December 8th, 2017, 10:04 pm

Don't know where this came from, but...
2017-12-08_22h03_52.png
2017-12-08_22h03_52.png (1.32 MiB) Viewed 1291 times
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: In or out?

#2803 Post by animist » December 9th, 2017, 10:50 am

Alan H wrote:[url=http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.co. ... ughts.html]The phase 1 deal: initial thoughts[/url
I remember predicting here, long ago, that Soft Brexit was the likely outcome of the referendum decision. That seems to be the way things are going at present, which of course does not mean they'll end up like this!

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animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: In or out?

#2804 Post by animist » December 9th, 2017, 10:52 am

Alan H wrote:Don't know where this came from, but...
2017-12-08_22h03_52.png
TBF to Boris, though not to Redwood, I think the former has been misquoted, and was talking about an "extortionate" demand

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Alan H
Posts: 24067
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Re: In or out?

#2805 Post by Alan H » December 9th, 2017, 12:00 pm

animist wrote:
Alan H wrote:Don't know where this came from, but...
2017-12-08_22h03_52.png
TBF to Boris, though not to Redwood, I think the former has been misquoted, and was talking about an "extortionate" demand
He makes it here: Boris Johnson explains 'EU can go whistle' remark. His stupid comment was in response to another Tory MP saying that we'd given money to the EU over the years and that if they wanted a penny more they could whistle. Johnson didn't seem to disagree with that at all, although he added that the 'demands' from the EU were extortionate and that 'to go whistle was an entirely appropriate expression'.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: In or out?

#2806 Post by animist » December 11th, 2017, 12:04 pm

so barely a day after some semblance of an agreement on the Brexit issues, David Davis decides to undermine the whole thing by claiming that the UK can rat on its commitments to pay a fair size exit bill if a trade deal does not materialise. My wife wonders if he is really a Remainer! However does he stay in place?

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animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: In or out?

#2807 Post by animist » December 11th, 2017, 12:09 pm

Alan H wrote:
animist wrote:
Alan H wrote:Don't know where this came from, but...
2017-12-08_22h03_52.png
TBF to Boris, though not to Redwood, I think the former has been misquoted, and was talking about an "extortionate" demand
He makes it here: Boris Johnson explains 'EU can go whistle' remark. His stupid comment was in response to another Tory MP saying that we'd given money to the EU over the years and that if they wanted a penny more they could whistle. Johnson didn't seem to disagree with that at all, although he added that the 'demands' from the EU were extortionate and that 'to go whistle was an entirely appropriate expression'.
but he did say here that Britain would meet its obligations to our "friends"

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Alan H
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Re: In or out?

#2808 Post by Alan H » December 11th, 2017, 1:35 pm

animist wrote:so barely a day after some semblance of an agreement on the Brexit issues, David Davis decides to undermine the whole thing by claiming that the UK can rat on its commitments to pay a fair size exit bill if a trade deal does not materialise. My wife wonders if he is really a Remainer! However does he stay in place?
By his own admission, he doesn't have to be very clever to do his job.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2809 Post by Alan H » December 11th, 2017, 5:57 pm

David Davis's supposedly self-deprecating joke was so crushingly unfunny because it was absolutely true
With apologies to the frog that is about to die during the dissection of this particular joke, what so amused Davis here, the root of the joke if you will, was the absurd idea that he might not be very intelligent. That, and I know, I know, it’s ridiculous, he might not know what he’s talking about.

Which isn’t funny, at all, in any way, because it is absolutely true. That Davis was only being interviewed to try to undo the damage from an interview 24 hours before, in which he’d casually mentioned the agreement with Brussels triumphantly announced by his boss on Friday was, in fact, completely meaningless, is something we can come back to later.

First, a brief trot round the paddock of Davis’s Greatest Brexit Hits. 26 May 2016, a month shy of the referendum and the man who would be about to become the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator accidentally made a public declaration of his utter ignorance of how EU trade deals work.

“The first calling point of the UK’s negotiator immediately after Brexit will not be Brussels, it will be Berlin, to strike a deal,” he said, before laying out this utterly deluded plan in glorious detail.

“Post Brexit a UK-German deal would include free access for their cars and industrial goods, in exchange for a deal on everything else,” he said.

“Similar deals would be reached with other key EU nations. France would want to protect £3bn of food and wine exports. Italy, its £1bn fashion exports. Poland its £3bn manufacturing exports.”

Still, we all make mistakes. That a few weeks into the job he declared that the UK would, after exit, have free trade deals ready to sign to create a free trade area “10 times larger” than the single market is also, well, disappointing. At the most conservative estimate, the EU accounts for 20 per cent of global GDP. A free trade area 10 times larger than this would have to incorporate free trade deals with people from other planets, and even with Liam Fox in charge of the process, that seems unlikely.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2810 Post by Alan H » December 12th, 2017, 7:41 pm

This Brexit thingy is all going tickety-boo, isn't it? EU sends stark warning to airlines on post-Brexit flying
In a notice to all airlines, the European Commission said UK air carriers would no longer enjoy traffic rights under any air transport agreement to which the EU is a party, meaning they would no longer have the right to fly to the EU and between its member states.

They would also lose flying rights under agreements between the EU and third countries, such as the U.S.-EU Open Skies agreement.

Airlines based in the EU have the right to fly to, from and within any country in the bloc thanks to the single aviation market created in the 1990s, but Britain now has less than two years to renegotiate access or come up with an alternative system.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2811 Post by Alan H » December 12th, 2017, 11:43 pm

Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: In or out?

#2812 Post by animist » December 13th, 2017, 2:44 pm

the EU may have many faults, but this is something it did not have to do: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 65271.html

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Alan H
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Re: In or out?

#2813 Post by Alan H » December 13th, 2017, 10:43 pm

It's been quite a day, what with Parliament taking back control and all that: The battle for Brexit is back on
Don’t listen to the ministers who will want to spin this differently, this is hugely significant.

Theresa May now has to go to Brussels on the back of the first defeat she has suffered on her own business in the House of Commons.

And what it means is clear: Remainers – on all sides of the House – now have something to build on.

Expect the rebels to be emboldened. They have had an impact and although none will have felt 100% comfortable voting against their own party they will take comfort in doing what was right. This is why they were elected in the first place – to make tough choices in the country’s best interest.

The fact the Government would prefer the House of Commons not to have a final vote on the Brexit deal is an affront to democracy. It stinks.

This is what “taking back control” really feels like. And now the fight really begins.

Remainers have been on the ropes – now they are back and swinging.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2814 Post by Alan H » December 14th, 2017, 11:04 am

Two cheers for amendment 7
From that moment onwards, the British parliament became a sideshow to the ineluctable reality of time draining away, and the power balance shifted irrevocably to the EU-27. A lot of the excitement about the amendment 7 vote derives from the fact that British political journalists have not caught up with that fact. They have a huge expertise and a sophisticated understanding of Westminster politics - the procedures, the votes, the personalities, the drama - and are heavily invested in regarding that as central to the plot. By contrast (with some honourable exceptions) very few British political journalists have more than the most superficial grasp of Brexit issues. This is very evident when politicians are interviewed and are allowed to get away unchallenged with glaring, basic factual errors about, for example, how the Brexit process works. It isn’t because the journalists are necessarily biased for or against Brexit, it’s that they don’t have enough knowledge about it. Similarly, there is very little understanding of EU politics, and that has been true throughout Britain’s membership.

There is a parallel here in the way that some politicians seem to think that Brexit is a solely domestic political process. This was most recently and most egregiously manifest in David Davis’ pronouncement that the phase 1 agreement was not, after all, binding. It seems not to have occurred to him that this would come to the notice of – and would dismay – the EU with whom the agreement had so tortuously been made. And this in turn reflects the fact that so much of Brexit is bound up not just with domestic politics but, more precisely, with the internal politics of the Tory party. Davis’ comments seem to have been intended solely to re-assure the Ultras.

Which brings us back to the amendment 7 vote, which is yet another manifestation of the Tory party’s 30 year European war to which, through the Referendum, they have shackled the entire country. But as a result things have now moved on. The games within and between British political parties are no longer centre stage and the over-focus on Westminster has become a grotesque anomaly since Article 50 was triggered. Of course parliament may, depending on how things develop, come to re-gain a significance in the Brexit process. It would be very foolish indeed, given the instability of the government, to bet against the possibility of some new parliamentary conjuncture leading to a dramatic change or reversal of policy. But, for now at least, it is a sideshow. Last night’s vote was significant to the extent that it put a bit of life into the show but it was very little, and probably too late.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2815 Post by Alan H » December 14th, 2017, 3:28 pm

Anyone notice the Tories seem a tad reluctant to let Parliament take back this control they were all so keen on? Does the Government defeat on clause 9 of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill mean Parliament has ‘taken back control’?
The upshot is that by approving Amendment 7, Parliament has increased its leverage somewhat. The Government is now on notice that it must get Parliament’s agreement before any withdrawal agreement can be implemented, and that it must therefore seek to negotiate a deal that will be likely to garner parliamentarians’ approval. But that should not be taken to mean that Parliament is now fully in control. After all, if it were to refuse to approve a withdrawal agreement that it considered deficient, it would be choosing a chaotic Brexit over a less-than-ideal Brexit. The irony, then, is that by allowing Article 50 to be triggered in the first place, Parliament initiated a process over which the UK’s — and so Parliament’s — control is inevitably limited. That is not to suggest that MPs are wrong to seek to exert over the Brexit process such democratic control as they can. But it would be naïve to think that Amendment 7 empowers Parliament meaningfully to decide the terms upon which Brexit will take place.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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animist
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Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: In or out?

#2816 Post by animist » December 15th, 2017, 10:32 am

thought I would post the reply from my local MP, a bastion of the Establishment and thus/but not a rebel on the Brexit vote this week; I visited him personally earlier this year and was not surprised that he voted with the Government. Apparently he is expecting a lot more water to flow OVER the bridge!
https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/160561efaddb305f

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Alan H
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Re: In or out?

#2817 Post by Alan H » December 15th, 2017, 12:27 pm

animist wrote:thought I would post the reply from my local MP, a bastion of the Establishment and thus/but not a rebel on the Brexit vote this week; I visited him personally earlier this year and was not surprised that he voted with the Government. Apparently he is expecting a lot more water to flow OVER the bridge!
https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/160561efaddb305f
Just give us your gmail password so we can read that email...and all the others... :-)
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: In or out?

#2818 Post by animist » December 15th, 2017, 12:42 pm

Alan H wrote:
animist wrote:thought I would post the reply from my local MP, a bastion of the Establishment and thus/but not a rebel on the Brexit vote this week; I visited him personally earlier this year and was not surprised that he voted with the Government. Apparently he is expecting a lot more water to flow OVER the bridge!
https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/160561efaddb305f
Just give us your gmail password so we can read that email...and all the others... :-)
oops, suppose I should have cut and pasted instead! :laughter:

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Tetenterre
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Re: In or out?

#2819 Post by Tetenterre » December 15th, 2017, 12:47 pm

animist wrote:oops, suppose I should have cut and pasted instead! :laughter:
Yes, please. :D
Steve

Quantum Theory: The branch of science with which people who know absolutely sod all about quantum theory can explain anything.

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Alan H
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Re: In or out?

#2820 Post by Alan H » December 15th, 2017, 7:57 pm

Schoolboy error from dim David Davis
Should we expect more of a cabinet minister, or an 11-year-old at primary school? This is maybe not a question we expect to ask ourselves, but when faced with the reality of David Davis’s tenure at the Department for Exiting the European Union it’s one that’s become excruciatingly difficult to answer.

The Brexit secretary is certainly content to set himself a low bar. Speaking on LBC last Monday, Davis said he didn’t need to be “all that clever” or “know that much” to be the responsible secretary of state for the most complex series of negotiations in UK living memory.

Instead, Davis argued, all that was needed to do his job was “to be calm” – a sentence that suggests his job could just as easily be filled by a cuddly toy in a suit. To this stringent standard Davis has set himself, we can add just one more requirement, and this one’s a legal one: he has a legal responsibility to tell the truth to parliament.

Any MP speaking in the Commons chamber is required to speak truthfully, as is any witness giving evidence to a parliamentary committee. The rules around what happens if you don’t are fairly archaic – just like everything else about parliament – but in theory can result in being censured, being expelled as an MP, or even being jailed.

Just ‘disrespecting’ parliament can be enough to get you expelled: in 1947 a Labour MP was thrown out of parliament for writing a media article accusing his colleagues of drunkenness and taking payment in exchange for information.

So how does Davis fare against the low bar of staying calm and trying not to say anything untrue? Not well. His main area of failure comes around his ever-changing story on reports about the effect of Brexit on 58 different sectors of the UK economy.

Last December, Davis told the Brexit select committee the government was carrying out “about 57 sets of analyses”, while another of his ministers in May repeated the government had “conducted analysis of over 50 sectors of the economy”. In October, Davis was in front of the committee again.

Labour MP Seema Malhotra noted Davis had previously stated “that DExEU was carrying out 57 sets of sectoral analysis” on the impact of Brexit, then asked Davis whether Theresa May had seen those “impact assessments” or
not.

Davis’s response was clear. “She will know the summary outcomes of them,” he said. “She will not necessarily have read every single one. They are in excruciating detail.”

Such an answer may give the reader the impression that not only has the government done some work to assess what the effects of Brexit could be, but also that it has been incredibly detailed.

Less than two weeks after his committee appearance, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion calling for the publication of the 58 excruciating documents Davis had told them about. During it, a minister working for Davis was already backpedalling. “There has been some...
it is not a series of 58 economic
impact assessments,” Robin Walker
told the House.

Two days later, Davis wrote in a letter “it is not the case that 58 sectoral impact assessments exist”, before noting that there may be commercially sensitive documents in these non-existent documents that could require them to be redacted.

Eventually, Davis handed over two ring binders with 850 pages – about 17 pages per sector – of analysis, described by the MPs who have read it as shallow, superficial and lacking in any assessment of different Brexit scenarios.

By this stage, Davis was telling the committee that the “usefulness of such a detailed impact assessment is near zero” and “it was not a sensible use of resources”. Not only that, but he wanted the MPs to know that he hasn’t even bothered to read what has been produced. “I took the view that I wanted to be able to say that I did not read them,” he said.

In schoolboy terms, over the course of a year Davis’s excuse has shifted. It has shifted from “I’ve done the homework but left it at home” to “I’ve done so much work on the homework that I haven’t finished it yet”, to “the homework is too sensitive for you to see it”, to “the dog’s eaten it”.

Davis’s most recent excuse – who knows if it will be his final one – amounts to “not only have I not done the homework, but it would have been wrong of me to do the homework. Here are some notes I borrowed from someone else, but I haven’t read them. Oh, and the dog’s dead”.

Davis’s ever-shifting tale leaves us with two possibilities, both disturbing. The first is that Davis is not telling
the truth now, and the government does somewhere have detailed work
on the impact of Brexit, which it has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep secret.

The other possibility is that the government has simply not done the work of carrying out impact assessments on the biggest political change of our lifetimes.

Over the last year, the government has produced detailed impact assessments on its ‘Tourism Action Plan’, on ‘noise and vibration on HS2’ and on ‘driving test changes’, among dozens of other policies. If they’re important enough to do this work on, why isn’t Brexit?

Any school child who’d turned in the kind of performance Davis had over the last year would be facing weeks of detention, if not expulsion. Do we hold our cabinet ministers to a lower standard than that?
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: In or out?

#2821 Post by animist » December 15th, 2017, 8:56 pm

Tetenterre wrote:
animist wrote:oops, suppose I should have cut and pasted instead! :laughter:
Yes, please. :D
you've baffled me with this, TT. Do you mean that you would rather not have discovered my real name? Too late, it is on record, and you or anyone else here are welcome to email me direct if you'd prefer

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