Well, this managed to extinguish that unusual feeling I was experiencing earlier (I think it is called "hope"):
May's Article 50 extension is a trick to take us to the real cliff edge
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Do we need an EU referendum thread? (Brexit thread)
(3978 posts)-
Posted 5 years ago #
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“
Lib Dem transport spokesperson, Cll Gillian Gloyer raised Brexit risks.
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Posted 5 years ago # -
"Martin McKee and colleagues lay out outcomes for health services and the NHS in four possible Brexit scenarios: No-Deal Brexit; a Withdrawal Agreement; the Northern Ireland Protocol's backstop; and a Political Declaration on the Future Relationship. There is no good news for the NHS—or for health. In all scenarios, depletion of the NHS workforce is inevitable, care for UK nationals living in the EU is uncertain, and access to medicines, vaccines, and devices hangs in the balance."
Posted 5 years ago # -
We are 688 hours from seeing large parts of the legal and regulatory fabric of UK society vanish in a puff of smoke.
In any normal country the president would have taken a private jet to Dubai and all radio stations would be playing military music.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Brexit and Climate change have this is common: the best case scenario is still very bad indeed.
Posted 5 years ago # -
“
Paymrnt of £33m to Eurotunnel by Department for Transport as compensation for the botched awarding of no-deal ferry contracts is heartbreaking. This is real money that did not have to be paid. Grayling and senior civil servants have much explaining to do
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https://mobile.twitter.com/peston/status/1101444711238246400
Posted 5 years ago # -
Paymrnt of £33m to Eurotunnel by Department for Transport as compensation for the botched awarding of no-deal ferry contracts is heartbreaking.
Behold... a truly gold standard of incompetence.
Posted 5 years ago # -
So we have the French minister for European affairs saying:
“So far, we are still waiting for a proposal from London. It’s really a British initiative which has to come. And it has to be supported domestically in the UK.”And we have Wales and Scotland saying;
Who can guess what Northern Ireland's assembly might have said were it allowed to function? I don't suppose the London assembly's too amused either. UK domestic support, what a laugh, eh?
The actual government seems to have just gone into the bunker with pistols, brandy and petrol. Typing on this thread feels like writing a note on an airline napkin as the ground rushes up too fast at an unwelcome angle.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Reminds me of the Terry Bisson short Story "England Underway".
Posted 5 years ago # -
Intrguing literary conceit.
Posted 5 years ago # -
“
Brexit: Does anyone really know what happens next?
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(Where we are, according to Laura Kuenssberg.)
Posted 5 years ago # -
"Number 10 is trying too, with a series of promises on issues like workers' rights to Labour MPs, and a cash fund that will be up for grabs for constituencies around the country, that have lost out to greedy urban giants."
(LK's wording before you click on link - to give context of how it is presented to 'the country'.)"A £1.6bn government fund has been launched to boost less well-off towns in England after Brexit.
The pot is split into £1bn, divided in England using a needs-based formula, and £600m communities can bid for."Posted 5 years ago # -
I take it thats on top of the £350m a week being spent on the NHS....
Posted 5 years ago # -
"That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were."
Nye Bevan, 4 July 1948.
Posted 5 years ago # -
No idea how accurate this is, but certainly graphic -
https://m.facebook.com/bristolforeurope/photos/a.1570877069885316/1986817104957975/?type=3&theater
Posted 5 years ago # -
UK realising EU is dominant power in Europe and Brexit will be on its terms
Just 495 hours till the start of the Hunger Games.
Posted 5 years ago # -
May their wine taste like cat's wasche.
Posted 5 years ago # -
LES JOYAUX DE LA PRINCESSE – CROIX DE BOIS / CROIX DE FEU
Posted 5 years ago # -
"A number of senior Tory MPs have told me that if @theresa_may fails to honour her pledge to hold proper meaningful vote tomorrow and then - if she loses - votes on no-deal and Brexit delay, they would back a motion to hold her in contempt. She could not survive as PM, they say."
Robert Peston (@Peston)Posted 5 years ago # -
Rejected again by 149 votes. What next?
Posted 5 years ago # -
411 hours to go and Her Majesty's Government is crouched naked in the corner of a bare cold room moaning, drooling and hugging itself.
Posted 5 years ago # -
“What next?”
GE May.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I must admit I'm quite curious about what the reasoning for extending A50 will be. Given EU mutterings TM is going to have to be persuasive.
We could be back next week for another vote with binary choiced if the EU sends us on our way. We may still crash out with no deal in 2 weeks regardless of the vote tonight. though it's more likely we'll go out on TM's deal, probably, who knows.
What purpose would extending actually serve - in terms of the process - when Parliament is so divided? There's certainly no political will to be sending MEP's in May, so what good would a 2-3 month extension achieve. None is the answer to that.
There's been a lot of scaremongering about the effect that Brexit will have, it seems to me at least that biggest negative impact now, is that Govt is so tied up with this no other business is being done.
We just have look closer to home with whats happening in education, and how our local services are suffering because ScotGOV only has one thing on it's mind.
We need to conclude both of these issues quickly, so that locally, and nationally Govt's can start to function again.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Anybody who wishes to read the UK of GB&NI's proposed import tariffs has 16 minutes per page reading twenty four hours a day before they take effect.
That's the smack of firm government right there.
PS @Baldcyclist The negotiations on trade deals and other substantive arrangements haven't even begun. This won't be finished for a decade or two.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@Baldcyclist: I must admit I'm quite curious about what the reasoning for extending A50 will be.
There could be at least a couple of arguments that wouldn't be completely full of holes:
Argument 1: The UK parliament has democratically rejected the 'deal' negotiated on the basis of TM's "red lines". Extending article 50 would allow time to re-start negotiations with a different/more flexible set of "red lines".
This one isn't too likely, given TM's bullheaded adherence to the "red lines" that she dreamed up on the basis of her interpretation of what the referendum result meant. Hence, perhaps, her suggestion that rejecting her 'deal' would leave only two options: no deal or no Brexit. She doesn't seem to allow the possibility of an alternative deal.
Given TM's intransigence it's not clear who would lead new negotiations from the UK, absent some fairly time-consuming shuffling of the deckchairs - and with no guarantee that we wouldn't end up with a genuine swivel-eyed loon in the hot seat when the music stops...
Argument 2: The UK parliament is unable to agree on the preferred way forward from those on the table right now, so we need time to put it back to the populace for a final decision. In other words, a second referendum. To complaints that a second referendum would be somehow "undemocratic", one could point out that the UK parliament has already had one more vote on the issue than then electorate as a whole has had, and failed to get anywhere. Representative democracy has failed so reverting to direct democracy, especially with new, clear questions, actually makes a degree of sense.
The alternative to calling a second referendum might be to call a general election and let whoever ends up with a "mandate" (assuming anyone does, which is somewhat debatable given the current turmoil within the parties) take it from there. But there's no guarantee that an election would deliver anything conclusive, or be likely to reach a final answer on achieving Brexit within a fixed timescale. (It would likely end up having similar risks & issues as I hypothesised if A50 were extended to allow negotiation of a new deal be person or persons unclear.) A binding referendum should at least be achievable and its result actionable within a given extension period - though getting it all done before the EU elections might still be a bit of a stretch (especially if the result were to remain after all).
* As IWRATS says, it's really just an agreement to carry on business pretty more or less as usual until an actual deal can be successfully negotiated - coupled with an actual agreement on the monies to be paid in order to be able formally to leave the EU without looking like welching {rule 2}s.
Posted 5 years ago # -
A 2nd ref sounds lovely, however there is no appetite for it, or at least no political will...
The Tories don't wan't one, and somehow are still 10% ahead in the polls.
Labour would quite like one, but their leader doesn't.The only way it will happen is with a Labour Govt, and there won't be a Labour Govt whilst Corbyn still has breath in his lungs, because the party has made it's self un-electable under his misguidance.
TM won't step down, and the Tories know punting her doesn't change the parliamentary arithmetic.
Whatever deal eventually takes from, is likely to emerge from negotiations with the ERG, and DUP than anywhere else, and therefor TM's letter is not going to have any of those suggested options.
I think we are closer to no deal than a 2nd ref, though I'd love to be proved wrong on that.
Posted 5 years ago #
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