The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
[Hiberno-Britannic Politics] - Tories Dropping like Johnson's Flies
Bogart
Streetwise HerculesRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
Streetwise HerculesRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
It's not really fine.
Bogart on
+19
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
Honestly, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference from a distance.
former eu commission, treasury, etc guy and now researcher at lse + journo
worth reading thread if you want to see details but the short version is that the eu seem to be planning to basically just dump a list of retaliatory measures on the uk gov in talks this week to in effect say "if u touch article 16 we will do all these things and u dont want us to do all these things" - with the detail that rather than having to wait for an arbitration decision to allow retaliatory measures they think they can do a bunch of stuff without needing to wait, so the gov cannot simply defer pain by praying the eu waits for the full process to run its course before doing anything
well, as the current govs approach inherently rests on a contradiction - the eu is an oppressive superstate but also a paper tiger that will fold under the slightest pressure when confronted by Grit and Determination - there was no way they wouldnt enable one side of that narrative. i think theres a good argument that a lot of brexiters need to realise the actual meaning of what living next to a trade superstate that ur not in actually is - the fictional politics of the last 5 years have been enabled by that lack of real, obvious consequences!
Hmm, where have I come across that before?
On december 24th, germany should fly out whatever luftwaffe bombers they still have lying around and airdrop turkeys and other christmas supplies into london.
shhhhh, you'll ruin the ending
There's definitely an undercurrent in the EU press of "wtf we've bent over backwards to accommodate these idiots and their misadventure, why are we bothering if they're going to try to pin the blame on us for the consequences regardless"
Honestly any sour grapes I might once have gotten from seeing some of the not rich brexiteers get their comeuppance is completely overshadowed by the knowledge it'll fall indiscriminately on deserving and undeserving alike.
2022 is going to be such a shit show and I just have no energy for it anymore.
One thing I noticed in that tweet chain was a lot of talk about fish. Hopefully there's other stuff that the EU can do because the Tories don't really seem to care all that much about the fishing industry.
It's simultaneously portrayed as an emblematic issue of critical importance, but not important enough to take any actual action over, which leads to this bizarre situation where the UK government is deliberately torpedoing the sector for no other reason than that it's an opportunity to blame the EU for something.
There's no reason to think that any other industry, sector, segment of society, or aspect of day to day life will be treated any differently.
They believed the lies from people like Farage and Boris who never gave a shit about them before, that it would be better and are now surprised it’s not despite all the warnings.
I’d not be surprised that if you asked them how they’d vote now knowing how things are, they’d still vote Brexit because they’ll still carry on believing that this is just a transition period and honestly this time it’ll be better.
They don't seem to give a damn about the financial services industry, and that's one that is a huge percentage of the economy and, one would think, populated by the sort of people that the Tories would be willing to listen to.
If the Tories aren't willing to help the banks, then they're probably not helping any industry. Maybe they'll help out an old buddy from Eton with a bit of light corruption, but that's about it.
are you trying to start a superPAC?
because I think that's how you start a superPAC...
Isn't that what all lobbies are? Just... funds from a very limited crowd funneled to a few specific lads with impressive rolodexes.
That's pretty much what charity/advocacy groups like stonewall are.
An all time classic
Voted for brexit in the ridiculous situation where they knew what damn fish they were catching, and how that fish is far less popular in the UK than it is in the EU! Like, their own area of expertise. The very fish and shellfish they pulled from the ocean and sold told them, "you need to remain in the EU"
No, see, they were supposed to be able to kick all the French out of British waters so they could get all the fish, and then sell even more to the EU.
I am almost certain this was the actual thought process.
(Not just the French, though, everyone except for Good Honest British Fishermen.)
Given that brexiters still believe that Britannia rules the waves and all that...
Well, if you keep dumping your shit into it, no one else will want it.
Drinking tap water in England: "Are you feeling lucky, punk?"
one of the the funny things about all this is that Brexit as a process broke the normal importance of consultation with industry - because all consultations were in effect making clear our weaknesses ( we need to ask for x yz equivalence, this concession here would be good) and Brexit above all was the political objective + a general resentment felt in the pop at large about banks etc meant that ignoring eg investment banking trade associations was not costly
however, all the old personal arrangements between companies and mps were still mutually beneficial...
so in effect the con government has only corporate capture without actual legitimate business policy consultation which is kind of jawdropping when u think about it
Also, if you want to hire a senior industry guy - he's going to have to deal with the regulators, so someone who has experience working as a regulator and also has industry experience seems an ideal pick. He knows where the bodies could be, and where the regulators might look.
This then starts a cycle, where you have to work in industry to get a job regulating it but you are doing that to get a job in industry, and will pick your sucessor to regulate you. This is regulatory capture - the industry is writing the rules, as they picked the guys regulating them and the people doing the regulation expect to be regulated as part of their gov/industry promotion track.
What @surrealitycheck is saying is that the people advising aren't actually part of the industry any more, they just go from being an advisor to the government due to connections to power, to being someone who uses that experience to set themselves up as someone who has to be hired to give their government insight to companies (rinse repeat). Cutting out the middleman of actually having experience in an industry and just being a chum instead.
Then the think tank stops paying you, but you have connections to hire yourself as an advisor to industry to explain what the government wants (as it never talked to you). So fishermen are never consulted, their advisors to government were never fishermen but instead old mates of the regulator or minister. The advisor then leaves their gov position to get fishermen to pay him to lobby on their behalf, but in the direction he recommends.
[edit]Turns out that Boris didn't miss out on the corruption debate due to being at a hospital up North, he got back three hours before the debate...
It came up in the special sitting yesterday.
Something along the lines of "The pm can't even be bothered to turn up. It's a 10 minute walk but he'd rather sit at home drinking a cuppa".
Remember whenever people bleat on about how it's too easy to transition in the UK, this is the reality.
Five years without a single new patient, and another 3 more at least before anything will change. It's a fucking disgrace.
I don't know if that's really a counterexample. Seems like the argument would be that it's overloaded with patients because it's too easy to get a referral.
The last patient to be admitted to that clinic, Obama was still President and Brexit hadn't been passed yet. That's not "too easy".
Yeah
If it was a case of too many unserious referrals you would expect a lot more turnover in new patients, not literally zero over 5 years
If there are a million people a year requiring cancer treatment and we have capacity to do 50,000, the fact we have 950,000 people waiting to be treated for cancer (increasing at that rate every year) is not evidence it is easy to get treated for cancer.
It's not alone in that btw. When it comes to non acute services and mental health services in particular the waiting lists and capacity are absolutely dire. Occasionally it creeps into other areas too; A&E waiting times in some NI hospitals recently were over 40 hours for non life threatening ailments.
As someone with family in Redcar
Yeah
Shit is v bad