How many roads actually cross the border?

People are not going to be smuggling vast amounts of goods across the empty wastes of the Cheviots on some cheeky footpaths. It’s impractical, and could be caught pretty easily.

Approximately 275 roads cross the border.

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/revealed-number-of-border-crossings-between-northern-ireland-and-republic-36850570.html

Interestingly about 11 roads have the border running down the middle of the road… Want to overtake a tractor? Better have your passport handy lol!

TJ, former judge of the supreme court appeared on newsnight the other night ( Monday? He looked for all the world like a certain Paul Whitehouse character… ) Suggested it would likely go the government’s way I’m afraid, but he did make the point that of course he hadn’t reviewed the specific evidence. I hope he was wrong. Quite a good piece though. Might be with looking out if you’re interested.

Aye – the pundits all seem to be saying its impossible to second guess the judges. a leak from no10 thos after yesterdays evidence was “we are done for”

I wouldn’t bet either way. Today seems to be going more the government way

oldandpastit
Just for fun I counted up the roads crossing the scottish border – around 20 half of which are very minor roads

24 I counted. Slow day at work.

Watching the Supreme Court proceedings on telly. Let’s have a book on when the lad with the green lanyard is going to fall asleep. He’s employing every stay awake tactic there is.

Reading the summing arguments on both sides and given obvious bias to me the government side arguments seem the weaker

How many roads actually cross the border?

People are not going to be smuggling vast amounts of goods across the empty wastes of the Cheviots on some cheeky footpaths. It’s impractical, and could be caught pretty easily.

A hard border doesn’t NEED to mean customs etc. on every road. TBH lots of borders exist where you can just drive across if you have nothing to declare (plenty Canada/ US or Sweden and Norway for example) but if you do then you have to take specific roads. A similar type of thing could be used between England and Scotland. (A point to note being that Norway is part of Shengen but a bigger point probably being that they are open to the EU not combative)

This is a problem with NI/RoI because of
a) the specific terms of the GFA…
b) Boris promised to take control of our borders and has been combative since … well before he was a politician

Its a huge problem for Boris if you believe this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41412561

“Whether it is number plate recognition or a driver’s smartphone app telling customs everything in a lorry has been cleared, the technology needed to make a border work smoothly is not exactly rocket science. The real challenge is bringing together politicians, customs officials and businesses from different countries to allow it to launch successfully.”

c) the terms of the WA expressly forbid a border in Ireland.

d) anyone attempting to construct such a thing is likely to get shot at.

e) there’s roads which criss-cross in between NI and ROI, you’d need a border every ten yards in some places.

This isn’t the road I’m thinking of, but it’s the same idea:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-northern-ireland-40104333/crossing-the-border-four-times-in-10-minutes

Any differences in tariff between the EU and UK means there’s the potential for smuggling across the NI border – it was rife before the GFA and helped finance the various paramilitary organisations. However, having a different / exceptional tariff regime between NI/Eire fails WTO requirements – you cannot give preference to anyone, you have to offer it to everyone – bit of a catch 22 when staying within the CU would make life so much easier…

Price worth paying.

https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/business/brexit-blamed-nottinghamshires-second-biggest-3331357

Fake News, Project Fear.

Cougar

c) the terms of the WA expressly forbid a border in Ireland.

d) anyone attempting to construct such a thing is likely to get shot at.

e) there’s roads which criss-cross in between NI and ROI, you’d need a border every ten yards in some places.

These are all point A….
dovebiker

However, having a different / exceptional tariff regime between NI/Eire fails WTO requirements – you cannot give preference to anyone, you have to offer it to everyone – bit of a catch 22 when staying within the CU would make life so much easier…

I’m really commenting on a border between Scotland/England as point A is inescapable between the RoI and NI. There is no reason that Scotland as part of the EU couldn’t have a similar border just because it is impossible in NI.

Why is Dovebikers point irrelevant to Scotland? If it won’t work in Ireland for various technical and legal reasons then there won’t be some magic way to make it work in Scotland.

squirrelking

Why is Dovebikers point irrelevant to Scotland? If it won’t work in Ireland for various technical and legal reasons then there won’t be some magic way to make it work in Scotland.

The legal reasons pertaining to NI/RoI and the GFA don’t pertain to Scotland/England
The whole agreement rests on there being no hard border, technological or otherwise…
I’m not saying I think this is what should happen… I’m just pointing out the situation is different.

Technology wise this isn’t even hard if you accept some permeability across the border… it’s not the end of the world if people cross the border just to go shopping… (half of Switzerland does that) cows and sheep wander in ignorant bliss… people commute daily in and out of Shengen between Denmark and Sweden…

What matters really is if a company in Barlick sell to a shop in Glasgow and that the paperwork is done and duty paid but that

explicitly

can’t happen between the RoI and NI.
Or Scotland/EU can just implement a “hard hard” border like they do with many other countries.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/20/fresh-brexit-talks-row-uk-eu-proposals-secret

So it seems now ‘we’ are trying a bit of ‘divide and conquer’. Well, ‘we’ have tried virtually every other underhand technique there is, so might as well give this a crack. Although ‘we’ have tried a bit of this already with Varadkar and the remainder of the EU.

How low can we go? With every turn made (in a desperate attempt to avoid confronting the core issue), ‘we’ look more mendacious and the EU more statesmanlike.

I really, really would have loved to see the look on Juncker’s face when Frost or Barclay or whoever asked the EU to trust a Johnson government to act in good faith. I hope they just smiled and said “with the greatest respect, are you just having us on now? That Beadle bloke isn’t about to appear is he?”

That holy water exchange in full: Jokingly given holy water to take to his next meeting with Boris Johnson, Leo Varadkar asked: “Do I throw it over him?” #Brexit pic.twitter.com/kKBduAVyaZ

— David Blevins (@skydavidblevins) September 20, 2019

Vradkar knows

The madder the Hulk gets, the stronger the Hulk gets

Officials briefed on the UK "non-papers" as well as the talks between the Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier, have described the proposal as a "backward step" and "totally insane"

— Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) September 20, 2019

Technology wise this isn’t even hard if you accept some permeability across the border… it’s not the end of the world if people cross the border just to go shopping… (half of Switzerland does that) cows and sheep wander in ignorant bliss… people commute daily in and out of Shengen between Denmark and Sweden…

Er, all of those countries are in the Schengen area. Besides which, Europe has enforced external borders, if we gained independence and EU membership this would cause customs problems that can’t just be ignored.

I’m ignoring the Good Friday Agreement completely here, that’s nothing to do with this scenario. I’m talking about enforcing an external EU border on our only land border. Assuming the UK went full “no deal” that cannot be resolved with wishful thinking.

Agreed

No deal or remain

(Only logical outcome is Norway type deal, but the brexiteers are still nutters & Johnson terrified of farage for that one)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49776100

MPs seem “a bit” upset about it all Bob. Probably best in another thread though.

I saw that as well, waiting for our resident Labour reps to square that circle.

Well just saw my first Brexit advert for travelling abroad…

Fk me absolutely fk all information other than taking insurance And your passport (er like you’ve being doing like for eva)

I saw that as well, waiting for our resident Labour reps to square that circle.

Do it in the right thread and I might reply 🙂 (it’s raining and I’ve nowt else to do)

Just watcing last week’s Question Time (yeah, it’s that bad!). Amazing watching Ed Davey floundering and being eviscerated from all sides and laughed at by the audience about the Lib Dems ludicrous revoke policy. What I didn’t know is that it isn’t revoke in all cases, it’s only revoke in the event that labour or the tories have not already provided a new referendum, and if in that case the public then voted for a lib dem govt, then they would revoke. Does this sort of simple flow-chart style policy sound at all familiar?

It’s only revoke without first having a referendum… if there hasn’t already been another referendum. Is that really that odd? Seems like a tautology to me.

Have they said that they want the result of any referendum to be “Remain”, and that the party will campaign for that? That’s what I’d like to hear from any party wanting to avoid the damage of Brexit.

Is that really that odd?

About as odd as trying to get a better deal than the tories abject failure and then holding a vote on it. Anyway, what was striking was how unpopular it appeared to be with the QT audience. With one policy the lib dems seem to have turned themselves from the democratic champions of remain to enemies of democracy.

I avoided watching it … please tell … what policy was “popular” with the QT audience … ?

Well just saw my first Brexit advert for travelling abroad…

Fk me absolutely fk all information other than taking insurance And your passport (er like you’ve being doing like for eva)

There isn’t any other information to give, maybe your EU health card won’t work and be prepared to queue forever in the non EU immigration line.

Before travelling “check online to see if your passport is valid” … cheers multi-million pound advertising campaign.

Caroline lucus absolutly tore the lib dem policy apart. Quite rightly. How on earth does that have broad appeal and be healing to a divided country. good job they are not going to have any power.

Surprised this place hasn’t imploded today after Corbyn on Marr. It’s really a shame that the labour party isn’t in a place like the lib dems where they can make promises without ever having to implement them, and only have to worry about winning votes from one section of the population. Look at it this way, has there ever been a leader of a party who has left open the possibility, before an election, that a government lead by them might not support something they’ve created?

It’s really a shame that the labour party isn’t in a place like the lib dems where they can make promises without ever having to implement them

Labour won’t ever have to implement its policy either:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

That red line has a trend that says Labour policy (or lack of it) has allienated about 40% of its voters..

Labours “lets ban private schools and seize their property” idea is going to harm them, not help them – it plays into the media’s “look guys….**** commies!” narrative.

Any chance of putting that in another thread?

Labours “lets ban private schools and seize their property” idea is going to harm them, not help them – it plays into the media’s “look guys….**** commies!” narrative.

That’s the labour narrative, not the media narrative. This is on top of confiscating 10% of companies, locking up political opponents and crashing the economy.

Any chance of putting that in another thread?

+1

14 PTS behind Tories &

Still

Can’t

Back

Remain

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/22/corbyn-on-collision-course-with-labour-members-over-brexit

and crashing the economy.

TBF that seems to be a winning strategy for No Deal Johnson ! It’s all the Brexit party ltd fanboys seem to want

Do it in the right thread and I might reply 🙂 (it’s raining and I’ve nowt else to do)

It was already asked yesterday.