** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

[thirdcrank]

Stealing the quote from mikeonabike I'll offer this:

“I pay tribute to the Irish government and Ireland the way that ... you know ... people in Dublin really saw the issues a long way out, much more clearly, perhaps than people in London - like me - did,” a rueful Boris Johnson, the former British foreign secretary, admitted in January during a visit to Dublin.

Or perhaps he saw it sooner too and decided a bit of bluster would distract people.

[mercalia]

A nice article in the Grauniad about how the Irish got their act together and made UK compliance with the GFA a condition of withdrawal deal
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... it-nemesis

Includes this quote from Boris Johnson:

people in Dublin really saw the issues a long way out, much more clearly, perhaps than people in London did

Of course most Leave voters I know are quite happy to see a hard border in the Irish Sea, with NI staying in EU (and Scotland too by the way). Though selling the DUP down the river would be just as much a dereliction of UK's GFA obligations as imposing a hard border on Ireland.

A misguided article full of detail but just wrong headed .
The backstop isnt required by the GFA that was all things to all men & women, both republicans and loyalists? The backstop is partisan in separating off Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, why Sinn Fein loves it. It wasnt the Southern Irish who were the clever cloggs but the EU who managed to make the GFA=Protecting the EU's dogmas on the single market. An electronic soln that worked sort of.a work in progress would satisfy the GFA but not the EU dogmas which were more demanding. SO the article is mistaken - really the EU played the UK AND Irish, the insistance of the Irish made the EUs interest in the matter seem respectable & persuasive as the UK were signed up to the GFA already. The Southern Irish were only acting in the end as agents of the EU swallowing whole the identification the the GFA = EU dogmas, and I hope they get their just deserts. I undernstand their are possible legal challenges to the backstop from one of the authors of the GFA that it damages the GFA.

Suppose the legal challenge prevaled on the basis above and that the EU had to accept a more porous border as all that the GFA could demand, what would their reaction be? They would dump the GFA pretty quick I bet you & insist on border controls of a 100% effective nature: the minimum would be a crisis in the EU & Eire

[Mick F]

No-one has said anything since yesterday morning.
Is this a record?

[kwackers]

No-one has said anything since yesterday morning.
Is this a record?

There's nothing to say. Brexit is dead or at least having a big snooze, everyone's on holiday and the sun is shining.

[merseymouth]

Hi there, Only one thing may have changed since the start of the recess - "Of what now is the Good Friday Agreement?".
With the Speaker of the US Senate wandering around the border area it's lucky she didn't get in the way of a stray bullet! Might have helped Trump is she had . Off for the Easter Egg Hunt. TTFN MM

[Mick F]

There's nothing to say. Brexit is dead or at least having a big snooze, everyone's on holiday and the sun is shining.

Good answer!

I wish our puppy would have a big snooze. Grief, he's hard work!
He does have a quick snooze every now and again. Maybe he's dreaming about Brexit.

[Psamathe]

There's nothing to say. Brexit is dead or at least having a big snooze, everyone's on holiday and the sun is shining.

I do find it amusing that when 3 years has proven inadequate, and we get a last minute 6 month reprieve the 1st thing the decision makers do is bugger off on holiday for nearly 2 weeks.

Ian

[mercalia]

wellthe BBC reported that Sparkle closed her car door that must have pushed any Brexit news into the sidelines? as it is so important we are told that?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-456509 ... a-car-door

[661-Pete]

And a little further down the BBC reported this story.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-4 ... -to-poland
It'll take a lot of persuading to convince me that the rump of unreconstructed, diehard Brex**iteers are not closet racists and xenophobes. However much they may bleat their innocence.

Try it!

[Cugel]

There's nothing to say. Brexit is dead or at least having a big snooze, everyone's on holiday and the sun is shining.

Good answer!

I wish our puppy would have a big snooze. Grief, he's hard work!
He does have a quick snooze every now and again. Maybe he's dreaming about Brexit.
Quick Snooze.jpg

I may send my collies to both play with that energetic pup and also to teach the methods for manipulating, managing and directing the humans to fulfill the various collie-wishes, which are many and various, as you will know.

Today I was inveigled into getting a particularly good stick out of the tree branches where it had stuck, despite the lacerations and banged knee. Later one of the beasts managed to blagg some of my post-hot-bike-ride ice-cream, which then required the ladywife to clean the teeth of the naughty collie - without getting accidentally nipped. (Oops - sorry).

That pup looks an innocent in the basket there. Ha!

How many words does he know so far? The record is apparently over 1000. The collie can also understand whole sentences of a quite complex composition. "Go to the main bedroom and fetch that stuffed rabbit from under the bed". This is a typical example in wor hoose, resulting in an instant fetch (and a demand for stuffed rabbit chucking & fetching for at least 10 minutes).

Cugel, collie-victim

[pete75]

I know quite a few musicians who like their zero hours contracts, other creative folk like the opportunity to do their own thing in non paid work times too. Previously many relied on the dole. Heres a table of minimum wages in Europe, we are in the top tier and I believe increases are planned in the future.https://www.reinisfischer.com/minimum-w ... union-2018

Britain has lost much of its skilled manufacturing capability which paid high wages and we are left with too many low paid unskilled service sector jobs. Thatcher and Union activity in the 70 and 80s did that. How we redress that I am not sure, but an end to the proliferation of 'hairdressing' degrees and emphasis on STEM subjects at University level might be a very good start.

Sorry to hear about your redundancy, I suffered it once and took the opportunity to start my own business from which I never looked back. Not so easy when you are old.

Al

Thanks for that but it's not so bad because I got quite a big payout - not six figures but not that far off.

I don't think it was Thatcher or the unions so much as the management that screwed up our manufacturing industry.

For example I've just been reading a series of books on motorcycling in the sixties and seventies. It has many interviews with people who worked in the industry , once the biggest in the world. The attitude of management killed it. They didn't see the Japanese as a threat until they'd taken almost the whole market and even then were extremely unwilling to sanction or invest in modern designs. Worn out machinery wasn't replaced so manufacturing quality fell at the same time as they were trying to extract more and more power from decades old designs.Engines were developed to give over twice the power output of the original design and at the same time were being produced with much lower build quality.

Norton Villiers had what was acknowledged as the best handing production bike in the world but with a creaking 25 year old vertical twin engine. What would anyone with sense do to modernise and compete with the Japanese - keep the good frame and design a new engine. What did they do - design and new frame and keep the old engine. The end result wasn't a bad riders bike but had reliability problems particularly if ridden hard and the highest performance version they made destroyed it's main bearings in under 5000 miles because the crank flexed so much.

Neither Mrs Thatcher nor the unions were responsible for the dreadful designs produced by BL. What went through the mind of whoever designed the Austin Allegro with it's square steering wheel to replace the Austin/Morris 1100/1300. They'd been Britain's best selling cars for several years. My guess is that if they'd produced incremental updates like VW with the Golf and a modern engine to replace the A series they'd still be making cars. How on earth did they think something like the Triumph Stage could compete with the Mercedes R107 SL for US sales. What on earth was in the companies mind when they designed a new and notoriously unreliable V8 engine for it when the same group had the robust, reliable and well proven Rover V8 engine to use. Not only would they have had a better engine in teh car but would also have saved on development costs.

[al_yrpal]

Well Pete I was working in manufacturing at that time and I would say that the Unions did a lot of damage. The main damage they did was that they distracted you from what was important, improving quality and driving up productivity. And Keith Joseph and Thatcher wiped out many businesses via crippling interest rates as a deliberate policy. As you will remember I had a Stag, nothing wrong with the engine design but just poor quality because the core sand wasnt properly removed from the water passageways, that and antifreeze problems caused overheating. Great car as evidenced by about 8000 of the 25000 produced still around. Stag Owners Club is still the biggest single marque owners club in Britain.

Glad you got the moola, invest it wisely and enjoy your retirement!

Al

[jgurney]

they might elect someone who then gets displaced by a Trot because there are huge numbers of them now

Huge numbers of Trotskyites in modern Britain? How many is that? What is the source?

[kwackers]

they might elect someone who then gets displaced by a Trot because there are huge numbers of them now

Huge numbers of Trotskyites in modern Britain? How many is that? What is the source?

Al is the source for all Al related stuff.

In Al's world Trotskyites are anyone that isn't of the "string em up and hang em high" political leaning.
Folk who never had money because unlike Al's sensible monetary policies didn't sensible invest the money they didn't have and so have nobody to blame but themselves.
Obviously the exception here is those who prefer the flexibility and lack of cash that the modern zero hour contracts offer, in Al's world these are OK because they've actually chosen a lifestyle capitalism approves off - i.e. cheap, on demand labour.
(They're probably "trots" too though)

[Audax67]

Artificial Intelligence???