Always best to be the power behind the throne rather than sitting in the hot seat.
Cummings is dangerous. Anyone who is given to quoting Nietzsche to the exclusion of other thinkers needs watching. The scoundrel's philosopher of choice when it comes to pushing general nastiness.
I'm starting to wonder if the roost is going to be big enough for all the chickens coming home?
Just been reading that. Absolute madness! Complete and utter insanity!
So according to Pob, smart borders will be in place within 5 years.
Given the record on IT projects I’m guessing ten years and 50 billion quid later we still won’t have a working system.
And during that decade, big business will quietly shut up shop and relocate to the E.U. to save themselves the hassle
Still.... blue passports eh?
Still…. blue passports eh?
Today's wheeze is the bridge isn't it?
He ho... let the Hunger Games begin...
I'm in northern Italy. The radio in the taxi had a five minute piece about Brexit, followed by a good three minutes on the Irish elections. So it's still in the news.
I’m starting to wonder if the roost is going to be big enough for all the chickens coming home?
It's amazing the gall to talk about the necessity of border checks like he's just figured it out, and half the country haven't been saying it all along.
Gove's comments continue the trend of 'walking back' multiple unequivocal statements made by the tories upto the GE; now they have total control we're beginning to see what brexit will really mean.
Statements made by johnson and his senior acolytes prior to the GE are now being shown to be nothing more than empty words.
Yes, I know that many here - and elsewhere - were calling bollocks to all of johnson's words but surprising numbers either believed him or didn't care.
Either way there will be a huge price to be paid for this madness - economic pain being the most obvious.
We will have to see on Thursday what the cabinet reshuffle looks like, if there is an ingress of ERG nutters then thats the way its hoing.
Currently there are no signs of anything other than a hard brexit, in reality Boris has little choice if he wants to keep his majority post brexit then he needs the masses on his side and a hard Brexit delivers that on multiple levels by telling "jonny foreigner" to get stuffed, instigate the Blitz spirit (i.e suffer for your pride poor people) zero tariffs (cheap yankee chicken yee haa) shit loads of cheap imorted tat
Anything else has to many political compromises and trade offs.
Still…. blue passports eh?
Apparently they’ve still got loads of the red ones left, so they’re not going to do the blue ones for a bit. Or so I heard.
Frictionless Border you say?
Gove has just shot one of the unicorns in the face...🦄
'Frictionless trade with the EU will end in 2020' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51453189
Edit: seems that the bbc are several hours behind the papers
Frictionless Border you say?
Of course. Don’t go giving us this Project Fear stuff being banded about by… [checks notes]… Vote Leave’s Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. The bait and switch is complete, the conmen win. Have a nice wasted decade all.
kelvin
...Have a nice wasted decade all.
OTOH I think some of us will have a very fruitful decade. 🙂
If that’s a reference to Scotland not getting dragged through all this shit along with the rest of us… I fear you’ll be sadly disappointed.
I don’t think we will be beside you for the entire shitshow Kelvin. Just think; Carlisle will be like Tijuana.
Well, Wangerland is becoming more and more likely… but it’ll take more than a decade to come about, if it does.
We will have to see on Thursday what the cabinet reshuffle looks like, if there is an ingress of ERG nutters then thats the way its going
His present cabinet is full of brexiteer ultras. Not your ERG lot though. Gove, Patel, Javid, Truss, Kwatang etc are a bit of a different animal. They are absolutely rabid, fanatical free-marketeers who want to see complete deregulation of all areas and absolutely everything to be thrown open to 'the market'
These people are very different from your Bill Cash/Mark Francois style headbangers though. They're not your misty-eyed, nostalgic, flag-waving 'two world wars and a world cup' loons. They're not fussed about much of that. They're looking very much to the future. They've just used those union-jack-clad Faragists as convenient allies to get us to where we are now. They've now served their purpose and can be discarded
Given the size of his majority, and the complete absense of anything resembling an opposition, It's difficult to see Boris changing direction. He's well and truly on board with all of this. We are now finally really seeing what the final post-Brexit UK will look like.
See how 'No Deal' has now been re-branded as an 'Australia-style deal'. Well... thats just a no deal crash out thats been given another name to make it more palatable to people who aren't paying too much attention to the detail. The end result will be exactly the same.
They've always intended to crash us out. And they'll use the resulting economic and cultural chaos to remodel our society into some US/Ayn Rand dystopian uber-neoliberal nightmare where we become a completely deregulated tax haven/sweatshop off the coast of Europe. A subservient satellite of Trumps America.
Something to look forward too, eh?
Make the most of the next year, because at the end of it time will be being called on a lot of things we presently take for granted as part of living in a civilised society. The project they have in mind is going to make Thatcherism look like a tiny bit of economic rearranging
The EU have rejected the tories proposals on financial services outright - as was always obviously going to happen.
Barnier says EU will not give the UK “open-ended” equivalence recognition for financial services. That means one of the UK government’s demands (see today’s Financial Times’ splash) has been shot down immediately.
I thought Carlisle was already a bit like Tijuana.....
Barnier:
We will keep control of these tools and we will retain a free hand to take our decisions.
But...but...but, aren't 'we' meant to be the ones taking back control?
javid the mekon said
If the EU, like us, wants a durable relationship, we should also include measures to directly address the long-term needs of industry for a reliable equivalence process. This would provide the certainty on which internationally mobile businesses can depend.
Or - unless you give us access like we had before all the banks will run away to the EU
At what point will we be allowed to string these ****ers up from lamp posts? Before or after they destroy the economy?
Asking for a friend.
The economy won’t be ‘destroyed’, but it will be damaged, and ‘transformed’ at speed to try and mitigate that damage, and not transformed in a way that benefits you and me in any way… quite the opposite.
[Binners’ last post probably describes this transformation process better than most.]
There will be no stringing up of the conmen… it is those that have been pointing out the bait’n’switch con that are likely to feel the anger of the mob, not those that conned them.
Here we go. Statement this morning from Ursula von der Leyen, the EU commission president about what is being referred to by Joris Bohnson as an 'Australian style deal':
"Honestly, I was a little bit surprised to hear the prime minister of the United Kingdom speak about the Australian model. Australia, without any doubt, is a strong and like-minded partner. But the European Union does not have a trade agreement with Australia. We are currently trading on WTO terms. And if this is the British choice, well, we are fine with that, without any question. But in fact we just are in the moment where we are agreeing with Australia that that we must end this situation and we work on a trade deal with them."
They're going to crash us out on No Deal. They're not even bothering to pretend that they're intending to do owt else. They've just given it a new name
Or – unless you give us access like we had before all the banks will run away to the EU
Yep, which is basically a tacit admission that the alternatives are now really BRINO or economic disaster.
And why SHOULD they help us?
Manufacturing suffering the most in Q4.
And investment only saved by the government own investment.
All going well on board Brexit front.
And why SHOULD they help us?
They want to help us. It genuinely is in their interest to do so. But they can’t give us the benefits of a rule based system if we refuse to sign up to the rules. “We” voted to no longer be a member, so can no longer set the rules, and our government(s) can chose to use the rules or not… if it choses not to (which has looked like the end game for many years now) then we can’t benefit from them. It’s simple really, and nothing to do with what “they” want to do, and their willingness or otherwise to help us. The rules are not a “price to pay” to get the benefits, they are how you enable the benefits to exist.
Sorry, I should have been clearer.
What I was saying was:
Why should they help us to subvert their own rules for our own individual gain?
Carlisle will be like Tijuana.
Only without the sunshine, cactus and agave!
All I can do is keep highlighting the broken promises and backtracking to all those who for whatever reason were taken in and voted for these measures. They seem easily led and gullible, I'm hoping they'll do the lamp post stringing so I don't have to
When you think about it, the risk of this ending up going a bit lamp-posty is actually pretty high.
This lot have cynically mounted a power grab by promising the most angry and pissed-off people in the country that they can have the solution to all their problems - the moon on a stick and that there are no down-sides to that.
They fully intend to not only fail to deliver that moon on a stick, but to use this as a ruse to increase their own wealth and power at the expense of the already angry and pissed off people.
On top of this, the people who weren't angry and pissed off enough to vote for this are now really, really, really angry and pissed off too
Thats an awful lot of anger and pissed-offness to be on the receiving end of when the cold harsh reality of the lies and deceit become glaringly apparent, which by my reckoning is now less than 11 months away
They will use their control of the media to shift the blame elsewhere and these idiots who fol;owed them this far will follow them on that step as well.
Cummings has made an interesting comment about the cabinet being worse than a kids cartoon! Would be nice if they grew a backbone and scuppered Johnson.
will follow them on that step as well
As I said, if there are ever lynchmobs, they won’t be going after the highly successful conmen, their attention will be diverted elsewhere. We should be very fearful of that outcome.
Cummings has made an interesting comment about the cabinet being worse than a kids cartoon! Would be nice if they grew a backbone and scuppered Johnson.
His angle will be that they don't just do what he says. Could well be another round of 'sack the ones that still ask awkward questions'.
Not necessarily a good thing.
They will use their control of the media to shift the blame elsewhere and these idiots who fol;owed them this far will follow them on that step as well.
That's why I'm keen to keep reminding where the blame really is - there are a couple I know who would quite readily turn and swing me from the lamp post, they seem more and more rabid and unhinged the more you point out how they have been lied to, or at least, had their xenophobic/racist tendencies pandered to
Cummings has made an interesting comment about the cabinet being worse than a kids cartoon!
The Observer did a piece on Cummings at the weekend. Apparently even Boris is tiring of Doms constant need to be disruptive and abusive and bullying to everyone. Everyone else in cabinet is heartily sick of him as he has no off switch and is just an evil gnome. And now the Tory majority has been secured, he's served his purpose.
We'll find out in the reshuffle on Thursday. Dom and 'the Saj' absolutely despise each other (as he won't just do as he's told) and Dom is insisting he's shifted away from number 11. So whether he's demoted or not will then indicate whether Doms power is waning, post-election or whether the cabinet amount to more than just a bunch of nodding dogs
The Irish election result has to be a surprise to the Government, can’t see Sinn Fein playing nice with any British government
their attention will be diverted elsewhere. We should be very fearful of that outcome.
It's already started (well, it started years ago, but whatevs).
LOL, I could tell that was The Sun within the first couple of lines. Rah rah.. Gotcha.. stick it up the Argies.. etc etc.. just sad.
They will lap that article up!!!!! ,,😂
Here we go. Statement this morning from Ursula von der Leyen, the EU commission president about what is being referred to by Joris Bohnson as an ‘Australian style deal’:
“Honestly, I was a little bit surprised to hear the prime minister of the United Kingdom speak about the Australian model. Australia, without any doubt, is a strong and like-minded partner. But the European Union does not have a trade agreement with Australia. We are currently trading on WTO terms. And if this is the British choice, well, we are fine with that, without any question. But in fact we just are in the moment where we are agreeing with Australia that that we must end this situation and we work on a trade deal with them.’
Yep so rebranding no-deal as the Australian model that oddly enough the Australians don’t want since they’re negotiating a better one 🙂
I was giving Boris the benefit of the doubt but it’s definitely looking a bit iffy with all the rebranding exercises, that looks more like an early indicator their intention is likely to be selling no-deal as a deal and heading us USA.
That Sun piece is truly frightening. I can almost hear the dambusters theme.
Clean break 🙂
My ass, ongoing unresolved EU squabbling over things for years, media feeding a toxic relationship against the EU.
Standards are slipping…
In the '70's, before and just after the EU "ruined everything good about Britain" by finally letting us join, Britain was 541t.
And it measurably was.
Known as the dirty man of Europe.
It was also know as the poor man of Europe as, despite being "free" to do the deals it wanted and trade "with the world", we were 541t.
And it measurably was.
Known as the poor man of Europe, it was - a nod to the Ottoman's, I think.
Haven't got a point.... Just enjoying the remaining time I can buy potatoes or pick a phone up and call the Fire Brigade without being asked for an insurance number.
