Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
two hopes on that neil ,, bob hope and no hope. the whole thing is dead in the water.
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 2,900
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/brexit/uk-official-in-charge-of-brexit-border-plans-resigns/ar-AACuXRW?li=AAnZ9Ug&ocid=mailsignout
Now that's a shame. Although I tend to disagree with her that the ILB is effectively insoluble in a so-called ' no deal' scenario, Karen was a good listener and most certainly not blinded by the traditional island mentality prevalent elsewhere in Whitehall. To hear that preparations are at a low ebb further increases the risk of making a cods of the Dover Straits crossings post-Brexit, I fear.
ray hutstone likes this
(Not my real name.)
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
She's certainly not the first. I know personally people locally (particularly on the IT side) who have already sought pastures new in the private sector. As experts in their field, they knew only too well the disasters ahead. This government has already spent millions on £1000 per day consultants - why shouldn't these guys have the share of the trough?
Yet we can't afford to care for our old and our industrial strength weakens daily.
The man with answers - Boris. Seriously?
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 2,900
Oh goody, at last something of Brexit interest in the Conservative leadership contest: Michael Gove's pledge to use "the opportunity of life outside the EU to look to replace VAT with a lower, simpler, sales tax" (Sky News, Daily Express, Sunday Telegraph, etc).
If Sales Tax means a tax on sales specifically to consumers, rather than on those to businesses as well (as is the case with VAT), then the question arises: when and where is the taxpoint? Presumably at the point of sale/purchase, and away from the border - making life simpler for imports across the Dover Straits and ILB. If one assumes that the tax only applies to sales to UK consumers, then exports become simpler too because they would be outside the scope of the tax and the physical point of export would (or at least should) have no significance.
The OAPs amongst us might call this Purchase Tax. I haven't spotted Mr Gove saying whether there will be more than one rate of tax though; perhaps 'simpler' means 'a uniform rate'... in which case you can expect an outcry when it is applied to food, infants' clothes and so on.
ray hutstone likes this
(Not my real name.)
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
button, what one says and what one dose are 2 different matters.
and don't forget a promise is not a promise until its deliverd.
Reginald Barrington- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,205
Pedant corner:
A promise is only a promise, right up until the point it is delivered! After which it ceases to exist.
Button and Brian Dixon like this
Arte et Marte
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
if ever at all. fake news.
Pablo- Registered: 21 Mar 2018
- Posts: 614
Reginald Barrington wrote:Pedant corner:
A promise is only a promise, right up until the point it is delivered! After which it ceases to exist.
And if it’s never delivered? And the person who made the promise is nowhere to be seen?
Brian Dixon likes this
Reginald Barrington- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,205
Becomes a broken promise?
Arte et Marte
Keith Sansum1- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,569
I think most have agreed now the vote was to come out and 3 years later we should have gone
Most want to get out and move on
. I just cannot see any deal getting through commons
But if a joke remainders trying to re run the ballot
Jan Higgins, Reginald Barrington and Button like this
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 2,900
I don't think the terminology has helped - 'no Deal', 'hard Brexit', 'Customs Union', etc being bandied about willy-nilly. I should like to see the two sides of the debate (for I feel sure that the issue will continue to be debated long into the future) re-labelled to: 'Stay-outers' and 'Re-joiners'.
(Not my real name.)
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
keith nothing to do with remainers,its all to do with Brexit people fluffing around to what Brexit they want. should have been out 2 and half years ago if it wasent for them.
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,656
Brian Dixon wrote:keith nothing to do with remainers,its all to do with Brexit people fluffing around to what Brexit they want. should have been out 2 and half years ago if it wasent for them.
The majority of "Brexit people" know exactly what they want.
The Remain lot of all parties up in Westminster who are and always have been the trouble makers, they would not agree to any suggestion or proposal. Brexit could have been sorted ages ago if there had been the desire to carry out the will of those who voted out.
John Buckley likes this
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 2,900
Jan Higgins wrote:The Remain lot of all parties up in Westminster who are and always have been the trouble makers, they would not agree to any suggestion or proposal.
First time I've heard DUP and ERG MPs, and our own Mr Elphicke of course, described as "the Remain lot". The fact is, the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated by HMG was voted down by a large number of MPs on more than one occasion; there's your delaying factor.
ray hutstone likes this
(Not my real name.)
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
the Brexit know what they want , but the trouble is they all want different things that no one can agree on. where as the remain group are all singing from the same song sheet.
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
Jan Higgins wrote:
The Remain lot of all parties up in Westminster who are and always have been the trouble makers, they would not agree to any suggestion or proposal. Brexit could have been sorted ages ago if there had been the desire to carry out the will of those who voted out.
I clearly inhabit a different universe. Please tell me which version of Brexit holds your preference? We could then understand what support it has amongst parliamentarians. Maybe it's the Farage negotiate a 'no deal' strategy. Yep that could be a difficult approach
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
From the FT. Wise words.
Anyone watching the contest to become British prime minister has to wonder about the cognitive skills of many Conservative candidates. Put simply: are these people stupid? They include several Brexiters who have put Brexit at risk by repeatedly voting against real existing Brexit. Now most of them are promising to renegotiate the UK’s withdrawal agreement with the EU, even though the Europeans insist they won’t renegotiate, having already refused to do so with Britain’s last two prime ministers, Theresa May and David Cameron. Plainly, the EU cannot cave and give Britain a sweetheart deal, or else every member state would want one and the single market would fall apart. Yet Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn plans to renegotiate, too.
Most Tory candidates also speak cheerily of “no-deal Brexit” as if it were an end state, and Britain could live happily ever after in autarky, sealed off from a continent with which it has traded since the Bronze Age (and where it currently buys insulin and time-sensitive cancer treatments). Meanwhile, Conservative MPs, the people choosing the shortlist of two candidates, keep making basic factual errors about Brexit.
What explains the poor cognition of Britain’s governing class, which, unlike voters, is supposed to grapple with policy detail? Here are some possible explanations:
• Many Tories are cynics faking it. They publicly back no deal, knowing it would be a disaster, but are counting on the rest of parliament to stop it. They just want to sound hard, because they live in fear of deselection by their hard-Brexiter local parties. Tory MPs know that the job market for ex-Tory MPs is currently pretty weak.
• The corollary: there is no political advantage in grasping reality if your voters don’t. Steven Sloman, cognitive scientist at Brown University, points out that most people cannot describe the workings of a toilet. The EU and the international trade system are even trickier. Sloman says the only way to handle complex issues is therefore to listen to experts. Politicians sometimes did that, until populism came along.
• Widmerpoolism. Kenneth Widmerpool, the creation of English novelist Anthony Powell, has become a byword for the blind will to power. Educated at a school modelled on Powell’s Eton, Widmerpool builds a glittering career (including a stint as MP) on tireless manipulative infighting. Powell’s insight applies here: after correcting for birth, power goes to the people most committed to getting it.
• An inability to admit past error. If you have supported Brexit for years, you will look silly if you let new information nuance your views. Recall how Dominic Raab was mocked for confessing he “hadn’t quite understood the full extent” of the UK’s dependence on the Dover-Calais crossing for trade. Karen Bradley received similar treatment for admitting that she only discovered while Northern Ireland secretary that Northern Irish nationalists “don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa”. It’s safer for politicians to be consistently wrong.
• If your genuine beliefs contradict reality, deny reality. Tory MP John Redwood is a fanatical Brexiter. So when he wrote that the UK’s exit bill on leaving the EU was “Zero. Nothing. Zilch”, as if Britain held all the cards, he was probably forcing himself not to see reality. A related Tory trait is what the French call volontarisme: the notion that willpower can change reality.
• Denying reality proves your fanaticism to other fanatics. Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski tweeted in February: “Britain helped to liberate half of Europe . . . No Marshall Plan for us only for Germany.” In fact, as thousands of people swiftly told him, Britain was the Plan’s largest beneficiary. Yet Kawczynski stood by his false claim for two weeks. By holding firm against reality, he signalled his loyalty to the cause.
• Laziness. In the British gentleman-dilettante tradition, many Conservative politicians leave boring detail to civil servants. Added to that is the callowness of today’s Tories, the luckiest members of the luckiest British generation in history. When you know your class will always prosper, you can afford airy gambles. Hence Cameron’s bet that a referendum would put the European issue to bed, reunite the Tory party and see off the threat from Nigel Farage.
• Stupidity and ignorance. Some people sound stupid or ignorant because they are stupid or ignorant. That could explain the Tory MP Nadine Dorries’s complaint that May’s deal would leave the UK without MEPs after Brexit; or MP Andrew Bridgen’s belief that “English” people are entitled to ask for an Irish passport (that Ireland is a forgotten British possession probably played a role too).
Ignorant people can succeed if success depends on other, unrelated qualities. Many companies promote good-looking people. The Tory party promotes articulate public schoolboys.
In the classic essay “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”, the late Italian economic historian Carlo Cipolla warned: “A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.” He explained: “Stupid people cause losses to other people with no counterpart of gains on their own account. Thus society as a whole is impoverished.” Let’s hope the next prime minister is merely a bandit.
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Ross Miller likes this
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 2,900
I look forward to an FT article of similar length on Labour's position, which I think (but could be wrong) involves negotiating a Customs Union with the EU in place of the current Withdrawal Agreement, in which the UK has more say over something or other. To what end, I have no idea. Mind you, I did see Andrea Leadsom telling Channel 4 News that preparations could be completed within September and October. Again, to what end I have no idea.
(Not my real name.)
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
I agree. But to be fair to the author his article is written in the context of the Tory leadership contest. He also summarises his feelings about the equally baffled Corbyn in a single sentence in the first paragraph.