UK Politics- P0rn, Horn and Local Elections

[Derfel Cadarn]

Tory MP and government minister, who gets subsidised meals and expenses and a 2nd home, suggests people work more hours or get a better job.

Thanks!

Hopefully at next election someone in her constituency will take her words to heart and take her job.

 

[BigFatCoward]

6 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Tory MP and government minister, who gets subsidised meals and expenses and a 2nd home, suggests people work more hours or get a better job.

Thanks!

Hopefully at next election someone in her constituency will take her words to heart and take her job.

 

Heads, spikes, walls.

[Heartofice]

She shouldn't have said it, because thats just not something you can say out loud for fear of being taken out of context and the outrage mobs going crazy. The headlines are really taking it out of context.

But the basic principle of what she is saying, that people should be able to access a flexible and functioning job market that allows them improve their living situation and get paid more for their skills, should be the goal of any government. 

The problem being that the only thing people want to hear is 'we are going to just give you more money' 

[Spockydog]

Listening to a bunch of farmers and businessmen from Northern Ireland whining on the radio about 'this isn't the Brexit we voted for'.

Well, what the fuck did you vote for?  What did you expect? The choices were a border in Ireland, or a border in the Irish Sea. Not having a border was never an option. Regardless of whatever bullshit Boris Johnson was spouting in 2019.

 

 

[Heartofice]

Just now, Spockydog said:

Listening to a bunch of farmers and businessmen from Northern Ireland whining on the radio about 'this isn't the Brexit we voted for'.

Well, what the fuck did you vote for?  What did you expect? The choices were a border in Ireland, or a border in the Irish Sea. Not having a border was never an option. Regardless of whatever bullshit Boris Johnson was spouting in 2019.

 

 

There are many ways to have a border though, and to police a border. That is where the disagreement lies.

[Spockydog]

Norway and Switzerland have frictionless borders. Thousands of trucks and ships crossing their borders every day without any checks. They are allowed to do this because Norway and Switzerland signed up to, and agreed to abide by, a whole bunch of EU regulations. Johnson and the ERG rejected that approach.

We could have joined a customs union. But Johnson and the ERG rejected that approach, too.

Instead, Boris Johnson lied to everyone. And gullible cretins fell for his science fiction Irish border solution - maybe he was hoping that Govey might pull on his chaps, and go out and catch a herd of unicorns to supervise the crossings.

[Spockydog]

On the radio, a steady stream of Northern Irish callers saying they voted for Brexit, but not for this. They are all saying they are seeing no benefits. They are all, without exception, saying that Brexit is destroying their businesses.

Sounds like someone needs to go on tour in Northern Ireland. We need to stop this madness.

Someone needs to tell these people that they are wrong. Their businesses are not failing. They are just imagining it.

Someone needs to tell these people that they simply do not understand the finer points of Boris's brilliant Brexit deal.

Someone needs to tell these people that they simply do not understand how much better off they are. 

@Heartofice, your time has come. You have completed your training on this messageboard. Now it is time to set sail across the Irish Sea, present yourself and your superior intellect to the people of Ulster, and, for the love of Thatcher, EDUCATE THESE PEOPLE.

[Spockydog]

Nicky Campbell just told one of them, "Well you made your bed, now you must lie in it."

 

 

[Heartofice]

There are any number of different ways to apply checks to goods and services that do not need to be done the way they are being applied by the EU right now. Of course now all of a sudden the EU have literally no interest in protecting the GFA agreement, when during Brexit negotiations they maintained it was absolutely their priority.. that seems to have disappeared altogether. 
 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

30 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

There are many ways to have a border though, and to police a border. That is where the disagreement lies.

 

No, not really. Sorry, I don't speak owl, so I'll try it with simple English instead again.

The disagreement is exactly at the very core of Brexit problems.

Brexit campaigners (and later on PM May) promised three irreconcilable things (to various groups).

- The UK being free from EU rules (that make up the EU single market) and to make its own trade deals

- There would be No-Hard border in Ireland 

- There would be no border between NI and the rest of the UK

Only two of those promises could ever be kept at the same time. 

The UK does its own thing, being no longer bound by the EU rules and thus no longer part of the single market, means border/custom checks. I get that this was the number one priority of Brexit, I mean, otherwise what's the point. That the UK doesn't really actually want to do it, but rather talk about it (see custom checks English ports, and Rees-Twat spinning it as taking back control, by not taking control) is amusing, but besides the point.

Now, one of the other two promises must be broken. There's no way around it. And it was always gonna be the NI-UK border promise and angry unionists, who would end up being thrown under a  red Brexit bus. ROI (backed by the EU27) were adament about no hard border in Ireland. Let's put aside Johnson's BS about non existing technologies solving that problem by some miracle. Even crazies like Gove were not particularly keen on putting up a border there, and return to the troubles.

So HMG decided it would rather deal with some pissed off flag waving morons in NI, than go into a trade war with the EU while also angering the political establishment in the US. The problems it would cause were very much in the open the entire time. Johnson himself brought down PM May, over this exact issue. Only to rehash, repackage her Brexit deal (and selling some DUPed morons down the river). Thus NI remained in the customs territory of the EU. Again, now that there are two different customs territories, there needs to be a border of some sorts (for custom checks) somewhere. 

 

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

25 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

There are many ways to have a border though, and to police a border. That is where the disagreement lies.

Do tell, and how many of those "many ways" actually uphold the spirit and letter of the GFA that there will be no hard border between Ireland and NI? And how many of those "many ways" are the DUP willing to entertain? 

[Spockydog]

*tumbleweed*

[Heartofice]

2 hours ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

Do tell, and how many of those "many ways" actually uphold the spirit and letter of the GFA that there will be no hard border between Ireland and NI? And how many of those "many ways" are the DUP willing to entertain? 

Oh there are plenty:

- Reverse the burden of proof so that goods entering NI  from the UK are treated as being for domestic consumption as default rather than the other way round as per EU rules.

- Define more products such as food as 'not at risk', and simplify the entire process.
 

- Expand the trusted trader scheme
 

- Use existing commercial data to to identify product information rather rather than cumbersome customs declarations.

- Giving NI businesses more choice about what standards they want to conform to depending on what market they are selling into. Pretty irrelevant given UK and EU standards are virtually the same anyway.

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Just now, Heartofice said:

- Reverse the burden of proof so that goods entering NI  from the UK are treated as being for domestic consumption as default rather than the other way round as per EU rules.

Defacto putting the border in Ireland. Violation of the GFA and the NI protocol in the Brexit deal, the UK signed off.

2 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

- Define more products such as food as 'not at risk', and simplify the entire process.

Nope. Standards are there for reason. The UK agreed that NI is part of the EU customs territory, the rules for food imports are there for a reason. NI can't be a backdoor for the UK to the EU single market. 

3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

- Expand the trusted trader scheme

Which isn't even working in its current shape or form. But more of that bureaucratic nonsense.

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

- Giving NI businesses more choice about what standards they want to conform to depending on what market they are selling into. Pretty irrelevant given UK and EU standards are virtually the same anyway.

Again, NI is part of the EU market - is it really that difficult to understand? The UK will probably not divert from the EU standards anyway, the UK market is too small to be worth it for business. So that's probably not gonna be a real world problem in the near future (besides being a non-starter). 

I think I forgot one more non-practical thing. Which sounds good as long as one doesn't think about it.

[Heartofice]

Just now, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Defacto putting the border in Ireland. Violation of the GFA and the NI protocol in the Brexit deal, the UK signed off.

No it doesn't. 

1 minute ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Nope. Standards are there for reason. The UK agreed that NI is part of the EU customs territory, the rules for food imports are there for a reason. NI can't be a backdoor for the UK to the EU single market. 

Nope. It already happens for goods, the point is to expand it to food and other products.
 

3 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Again, NI is part of the EU market - is it really that difficult to understand? The UK will probably not divert from the EU standards anyway, the UK market is too small to be worth it for business. So that's probably not gonna be a real world problem in the near future (besides being a non-starter). 

It's also part of the UK market. But giving more flexibility if it's selling to different markets is a useful thing to do.


Here it seems you've taken on your EU persona, which is to dismiss all solutions out of hand, even if they would fix the problem. 
 

[mormont]

The NI protocol issue is a complicated one - as it always was, to be fair, going back to the referendum, but now it's more so.

On the one hand, everyone actually agrees that there has to be a protocol or similar arrangement. Despite posturing by the UK government, they almost certainly realise they can't just unilaterally impose arrangements on the EU. In the long term that's unworkable and will only lead to a de facto hard border.

On the other hand, the UK government position isn't as simple as picking a fight with the EU for political reasons, though there's a hefty element of that. (I noted during the referendum that the idea that Brexit would end the argument over the EU was plainly untrue, as the Tories would still get just as much mileage out of arguing with the nasty EU as they always had.)

The Unionist parties don't like the current protocol for whatever reasons, and insist on a change before they'll go into government. That's a genuine problem for the UK government in terms of the GFA, and they do have to do something about it. Much as we can all sit here and say that the Unionists should go into government, or that the UK government should make them, the UK government can't make them. And that's genuinely bad for the GFA.

On the other hand, the majority of elected representiatives in NI, and we can assume most voters, support the continued existence of the protocol in its current form. So imposing a new protocol that suits the Unionists is also a problem for the GFA. It's anti-democratic and effectively means the Unionists get a veto.

(Jeffrey Donaldson blithely talks about there being a need for 'consensus' for power sharing to work, forgetting or ignoring the fact that the Nationalists agreed to enter power-sharing without such a consensus existing on several important issues.)

Technological solutions were Johnson's answer to all this in 2016, and six years later we're no closer to even knowing what those would look like let alone agreeing to or implementing them, so we can ignore that discussion.

Further complications arise because the UK government, for ideological and political reasons, want to see as few regulations in any new protocol as possible. The EU, trying to balance concerns from all its member countries but particularly Eire, want a more detailed agreement. The breezy 'we'll figure out the details later' approach Johnson and his cabinet take to most political issues won't fly.

So what's actually needed is some serious talks to agree a new protocol that isn't too different from the old one but that rids the Unionists of any excuses for not getting on with governing, which most NI voters (we can be absolutely sure) do want. And in the meantime, for the UK government to actually implement the measures they agreed to and stop trying to make out that the EU are being unreasonable for asking people to do what they said they'd do.

[The Anti-Targ]

14 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

No it doesn't. 

 

 

Yes it does.

[Derfel Cadarn]

5 minutes ago, mormont said:

The NI protocol issue is a complicated one - as it always was, to be fair, going back to the referendum, but now it's more so.

On the one hand, everyone actually agrees that there has to be a protocol or similar arrangement. Despite posturing by the UK government, they almost certainly realise they can't just unilaterally impose arrangements on the EU. In the long term that's unworkable and will only lead to a de facto hard border.

On the other hand, the UK government position isn't as simple as picking a fight with the EU for political reasons, though there's a hefty element of that. (I noted during the referendum that the idea that Brexit would end the argument over the EU was plainly untrue, as the Tories would still get just as much mileage out of arguing with the nasty EU as they always had.)

The Unionist parties don't like the current protocol for whatever reasons, and insist on a change before they'll go into government. That's a genuine problem for the UK government in terms of the GFA, and they do have to do something about it. Much as we can all sit here and say that the Unionists should go into government, or that the UK government should make them, the UK government can't make them. And that's genuinely bad for the GFA.

On the other hand, the majority of elected representiatives in NI, and we can assume most voters, support the continued existence of the protocol in its current form. So imposing a new protocol that suits the Unionists is also a problem for the GFA. It's anti-democratic and effectively means the Unionists get a veto.

(Jeffrey Donaldson blithely talks about there being a need for 'consensus' for power sharing to work, forgetting or ignoring the fact that the Nationalists agreed to enter power-sharing without such a consensus existing on several important issues.)

Technological solutions were Johnson's answer to all this in 2016, and six years later we're no closer to even knowing what those would look like let alone agreeing to or implementing them, so we can ignore that discussion.

Further complications arise because the UK government, for ideological and political reasons, want to see as few regulations in any new protocol as possible. The EU, trying to balance concerns from all its member countries but particularly Eire, want a more detailed agreement. The breezy 'we'll figure out the details later' approach Johnson and his cabinet take to most political issues won't fly.

So what's actually needed is some serious talks to agree a new protocol that isn't too different from the old one but that rids the Unionists of any excuses for not getting on with governing, which most NI voters (we can be absolutely sure) do want. And in the meantime, for the UK government to actually implement the measures they agreed to and stop trying to make out that the EU are being unreasonable for asking people to do what they said they'd do.

Or as Russ Jones put it, Johnson’s solution relies on tech unique to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
 

[Spockydog]

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Or as Russ Jones put it, Johnson’s solution relies on tech unique to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
 

Yeah, in Phase XIV.

 

[Maltaran]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

No it doesn't. 
 

If you are treating goods as domestic by default, how would you prevent unscrupulous people from declaring goods as for domestic use and then smuggling them across the Irish border without putting border checks in place?