more dismal news from Brexit Briton don't know about culture wars but this is certainly a war on our culture.
Tours get extended. Why employ someone who can't commit to more than 3 months?
Yet another reason why this whole thing has been a celebration of ignorance and the triumph of stupidity
When those checks come in its goong to be a clusterfarage
Christ.
It keeps getting kicked into the long grass with 'delays' as the UK administration hasn't got a clue how to deal with it, which technically is a fair position, as I can't see any way how to square that circle either.
It's going to be a right stinking mess. Maybe the tories should call a GE so they can as least attempt to deflect some blame for the approaching shit storm.
I suspect they will continue to delay it until after the election given its going to increase food prices
clusterfarage
Deserves attention.
Incidentally, has that other thread figured out any actual benefits yet?
“We are reflecting on the valuable feedback provided by a range of businesses and industry stakeholders and will publish the border target operating model shortly.”
Bit late to start listening now, isn't it?
clusterfarage
🎩
You'd really think the Tories would be keen to control the food stuff coming over our borders given they've seen the damage a single lettuce can do
So, Sunak bragging about removing monitoring and protection for river waters as a benefit (for developers) of not being in the EU.
I can see the tory line already..
We need more houses, so we are going to throw all the environmental rules out of the window and only really build a few super expensive houses on flood planes and green belts.
hash tag delivering.
Pretty much it.
Meanwhile, it’s now April 2024 before we introduce physical import checks on food imports from the EU… a fifth delay announced today. Leave it for Labour to try and sort it… and when/if they do the Tories can then claim they’ve betrayed the Brexit dream…?
We're gonna have to re-join the EU customs union at some point soon, in some form or another, it's just basic maths.
It might be dressed up as some kind of special deal, and to be honest, it will be a very 'special' deal.
We've royally ****ed ourselves. Or should I say 51% of the UK has ****ed itself.
Theres a 49ish% chance that whoever you meet in the UK isn't a total throbber.
This is more a single market issue than a customs union one… aligning with the single market on food and agriculture to reduce checks is going to have to happen. I’d like something done about customs as well… SMEs in the UK are being screwed by being outside the CU… but that’s not what the food checks would be about (if they ever happen in full… but that depends on the next general election).
https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/29/nhs_fdp_palantir_lockin/
This is pretty concerning too, but not supprising.
one comentor said:
Has this deal been audited by NCA or other organisation or are we waiting for "lessons will be learned" moment in a classic British fashion?
Can't wait to buy my medical records on DarkNet, it will probably be quicker than getting them from my GP.
And they wouldn't be wrong.
It would be nice to think that brexit is because of racist alcohilcs in wetherspoons, but they are just pawns with a voting card, It's actually very big business.
Both Open Democracy and Foxglove are actively and vocally opposed to the proposed Palantir deal.
I'm on their mailing lists and am a financial supporter.
I would stringly suggest anyone reading this to check out both; if you like what you see, sign up; donate if you can.
In my view, we need them more then we know.
It would be nice to think that brexit is because of racist alcohilcs in wetherspoons, but they are just pawns with a voting card, It’s actually very big business
We’ve already seen the government tearing up EU environmental standards so that water companies, property developers and house builders can make even more profit and sod the water quality for us mugs! And that will be the direction of travel until this lot are booted out
This was always the plan
Not long now before the Freeport’s are up and running to the delight of tax dodgers and money launderers around the world
That Palantir deal
That's a 'minor' issue I reckon compared to what we (and no doubt the next Govt) will find hidden in the various trade deals the Tories have signed...
This takes some beating for Orwellian Doublespeak
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1696455204990845089?s=20
Hold the front page, there's a benefit!
Removal of equal pay - back to the 70's, full speed while imagining what else has been removed and not yet noticed...
Also note that they're saying it'll be put back using "secondary legislation" - that is legislation that is put in without going through Parliament, and can be removed just as easily.
That removing woman’s equal pay rights via a sunset clause is pretty frightening ,they either decided to try and do it or it was incompetence.
Either doesn’t look good,probably worth reading thru all the others to see what else ‘accidentally’ might disappear.
And the use of secondary legislation so they can now just enable/disable an eu law without parliament on a whim.
What's going on with Horizon then?
Pre brexit Britain was a major player in the programme contributing 13% of the 95bn euro budget. "Great" I thought as I read the article but then it occured to me that £2.6bn wasn't much of a contribution.
So Britian is back in, good, but only contributing a quarter of the money, so how back in is it?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/sep/07/horizon-brexit-eu-science-rishi-sunak
Think that's simply a per year versus per program (5y) confusion.
yep yearly its the same, i believe its gone up a bit
we are only associate members though so losing influence, but still a huuuuge relief to uk research
and of course the damage has been done these past few years (eveb before grace period ended we lost grants due to uncertainty.shows how desperate Sunak is, a lot of brexiteers frothing about it but were slowly sliding back in.
Thank you, that explains it, all good then.
Does it still mean British (based) scientists can't be leads or is associate a full equivalence for grant applications?
it's odd one really can't see them getting grants above and beyond the 2.6b as eu governments will get it in the neck from their own side. And if that means greater freedoms for uk scientists in the eu where the **** are mine!
Yes I think they can, though not seen the details
But I believe we can only apply for the ERC grants NOT the Innovation council grants which tend to be more technical , so its definitely not as good as full membership
Have personal experience of this as my previous lab we were unable to apply as the lead team in collaboration with a Dutch & Itallian labs as even in the grace period , was a massive PITA
Great news about Horizon and Copernicus - provided the deal is ratified by EU member states.
It then seems perverse that the UK didn't attempt to rejoin Euratom and intend to go it alone - except for nuclear fusion research.
Good news.
“We have something not as good as membership but better than nothing” is genuinely something to cheer these days. Let’s hope we get more chances to do this in the coming years… a long slow steady improvement on the new status quo but not as good as what we threw away… is still positive. That’s what rebuilding relationships looks like.
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji';">Great news about Horizon and Copernicus – provided the deal is ratified by EU member states.</span>
How much is this going to cost us, vs what we paid to be in the EU before we left?
My understanding is that we'll be paying less and getting less. It is very fair towards us. Limited by what our government is prepared to accept and do, not the EU pushing to get a better deal out of us.
That might be "your understanding" but how much is the UK actually paying for this access?
I'm not questioning whether it's VFM etc, but looking at in the context of how much we use to pay IN TOTAL to be in the EU and with access to Horizon etc.
IIRC, 2 billion a year compared to about 17 billion a year in the past.
Obviously we’re not getting the same back from that… not even close.
It’s better than no involvement; an essential step in rebuilding.
We’ll be paying about the same as we get back. There are mechanisms to prevent a big discrepancy.
A big difference with previously is that we used to get a lot more out than our input into the programme. Another is that the visa requirements will be a pain in the arse for all concerned. Most of these projects are international in nature.
£2.6bn from another source, and then add in the £650m for nuclear - equals £3.2bn...
And it was £9bn in 2019, not £17bn.
https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million/
Is this why we never hear anymore about how much we use to spend to be in the EU, because even the hardest-of-thinking have worked out it was bloody good value?
It was amazing value. But also big numbers that people don’t deal with in their day to day lives. It really wasn’t understood by many people, they only heard big (to them) costs and were easily led (lied to) as regards the very real benefits and their dependancy on cooperation and coordination.
Did I miss Sunak telling us that the UK will be spending almost a 1/3 of what the entire EU bill use to be, JUST to re-join a science program?
It's a classic "good news, but brexit good news" story. Really glad it's happening and in isolation it's a good thing but as soon as you look at it compared to what we had before it's still a bad outcome. Plus as mentioned above, it does nothing to undo the harm of the gap, which might have been avoided completely and certainly could have been reduced and managed better. How much of that was incompetence, how much was zealotry and how much was just bloody optics, who even knows?
(I didn't work in research at the uni, but it was sort of adjacent to my job since I did student recruitment, and the spell when we were still in Horizon but we might as well not have been because for all forward planning purposes we were out, was proper brexit dystopia nonsense. Politicians saying "nothing's happened yet, it'll be fine" while huge amounts of work just went in the bin)
Good news indeed. Not as good as it was but another one that feels that this is indicative of the 'out but starting to move back towards' process. Also at the risk of starting the same argument again, why being out is crap but we can still make the best of it now.
On the getting back more than you get in. I understand the philosophy but it doesn't always wash. To me the benefit is the collaborative angle, and if we can move faster / discover things sooner as a result of the work of other, potentially more talented* researchers in other countries I don't really mind who does the research and gets the larger share of the money. That's what collaborative synergies are. If we wanted to get out what we put in / have absolute control, then just fund internal research...... but then you miss out on collaboration.
* Yes, there were times when we probably did get more because for all our faults we are/were still one of the bigger players with better facilities and equipment in Europe - so others were benefiting from us. Others have caught up, not least because we have lost some very talented researchers in the past few years to Europe because they were losing their ability to collaborate. I know both sides were part of the argument over the GFA, but if only that could have been avoided / sorted sooner. Bojo and reneging on agreements be damned.
Paying more for less.
Brexit bonus!
