BREXIT! BREXIT! BREXIT!

[Brian Peacock]

Well there is even more shit coming your way ...

Nah, it's the same shit as before - it just continues to pour.

[Svartalf]

They got their cake, now they eat it.

[Scot Dutchy]

Just four more days.

Last-ditch Brexit trade talks resume amid growing EU scepticism

Michel Barnier has told bloc he is prepared for four more days of make-or-break negotiations

Michel Barnier has told MEPs he is prepared for a further four days of make-or-break Brexit negotiations, with growing scepticism among EU member states about the utility of further talks.

Having spent a week in isolation after a member of the bloc’s team tested positive for coronavirus, Barnier and his staff resumed face-to-face negotiations in London on Saturday morning.

Barnier told MEPs in a private meeting on Friday that he would work through the weekend and then “maybe one or two more days” in a last-ditch attempt to bridge the large gaps between the sides.

EU sources said there was a growing feeling that the lack of progress and the need to prepare businesses for the repercussions of a no-deal British departure from the EU made it unwise for negotiations to continue beyond then.

[Brian Peacock]

It's not going to happen. The Tories will burn down the building to avoid a deal if they have to.

[Scot Dutchy]

Down to the wire.

Brexit: Johnson and Von der Leyen to take over with direct talks

UK PM and European commission president to speak on Saturday after negotiators fail to reach agreement

The Brexit trade and security talks will enter their final act on Saturday with a shift to direct negotiations between Boris Johnson and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, following the failure to find agreement in London.

In a joint statement, David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, and his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, said they had not been able to come to terms on the final issues and that the historic trade and security negotiation would be paused.

The year-long negotiation had long been expected to end with arbitration between the two political leaders, although there remains no certainty that an acceptable compromise will be found.

“After one week of intense negotiations in London, the two chief negotiators agreed today that the conditions for an agreement are not met, due to significant divergences on level playing field, governance and fisheries,” Barnier and Frost said in the statement. “On this basis, they agreed to pause the talks in order to brief their principals on the state of play of the negotiations. President Von der Leyen and prime minister Johnson will discuss the state of play tomorrow afternoon.”

[Brian Peacock]

I don't know why they're holding out on fishing. 70% of the UK's fishing quota is leased out to foreign interests, and most of that is owned by hedge funds these days. The retail outlet Debenhams, and their holding company Arcadia, went into recievership 3 days ago with 16,000 job losses just before xmas, which is 4000 more than employed in the entire UK fishing industry.

I guess the important word there is 'hedge fund'.

[Scot Dutchy]

I don't know why they're holding out on fishing. 70% of the UK's fishing quota is leased out to foreign interests, and most of that is owned by hedge funds these days. The retail outlet Debenhams, and their holding company Arcadia, went into recievership 3 days ago with 16,000 job losses just before xmas, which is 4000 more than employed in the entire UK fishing industry.

I guess the important word there is 'hedge fund'.

I entirely agree Brian. This whole fishing malarkey seems like a stinking red herring in order to achieve a no-deal scenario.
Britain has very few, we are the same, fishermen but yet this was made a big stumbling block.

[Scot Dutchy]

Here is a typical example and see how often the fisheries are mentioned and the position it is given in the negotiations which is totally out of proportion to its relevance to both sides.

Brexit: Johnson and Von der Leyen to take over with direct talks

UK PM and European commission president to speak on Saturday after negotiators fail to reach agreement

The Brexit talks will enter their final act on Saturday with a shift to direct negotiations between Boris Johnson and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, following the failure to find agreement in London.

In a joint statement, David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, and his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, said they had not been able to come to terms on the final issues and that the historic trade and security negotiation would be paused.

The year-long negotiation had long been expected to end with arbitration between the two political leaders, although there remains no certainty that an acceptable compromise will be found.

“After one week of intense negotiations in London, the two chief negotiators agreed today that the conditions for an agreement are not met, due to significant divergences on level playing field, governance and fisheries,” Barnier and Frost said in the statement. “On this basis, they agreed to pause the talks in order to brief their principals on the state of play of the negotiations. President Von der Leyen and prime minister Johnson will discuss the state of play tomorrow afternoon.”


EU sources were swift to reject claims from Downing Street, which were briefed to some newspapers, that a demand for a 10-year transition period for phasing in changes for European fishing fleets was an obstacle to a deal. “The UK wants a short transition, we have asked for a much longer one. There is a middle way – and that is not the cause of any problem,” a source said.


The talks remain focused on the level of access EU fishing boats will be given to British waters at the end of the year and the “level playing field” provisions. The EU is seeking assurances that the UK will not be able to distort trade through subsidies or by undercutting on environmental, labour and social standards.

[Brian Peacock]

I mean, as a negotiation point it's a fair issue. If you're, say, a Dutch factory ship owner with a 10 year lease on 50% of the UK's cod quota you really want to know that you can still get access to UK waters post-Brexit. But the way the Tory press have talked this particular point up - and dragged the rest of the media along with them - smells like spin to me: something emotive that the public can be made to feel hashtag-outraged about. "They want to come over here and steal our fish from our waters and put our plucky British fisherman out of business? No Johnny Foreigner - go home, else we'll fight you on the beaches!" As I said, more jobs have just been lost on the high street than if the UK fishing industry was suddenly raptured out of existence, and over 60% of pubs and restaurants have said they don't know if they'll still be trading in 3 months time. The Tory press aren't hashtag-outraged about that. But then again, this isn't about people's livelihoods is it - it's about money.

[Scot Dutchy]

Whose an idiot then:

Only an idiot would claim the vaccine triumph was a vindication of Brexit

Anyone thinking this week’s good news ought to be a PR open goal reckoned without the cabinet

Main thoughts on the vaccine: I will ingest this freedom juice any which way it comes. Jab? Yes. Two jabs? Yes, please. Down a vodka ice luge fashioned in a tableau of Jonathan Van-Tam and Chris Whitty looking mildly withering at a lectern? Let me just get my best party dress on. (I understand the product needs to be kept cold, so this feels like one method of delivery that The Science should maybe consider.)

Of course, it’s important to understand that other people have more complex feelings about what might happen. Take former actor Laurence Fox, London’s most fragile man, who recently addressed health secretary Matt Hancock directly via Twitter. “I’m sure I don’t need to say this,” began Laurence promisingly, before spoiling it all by saying it anyway. “But if you do try and take away the last vestiges of my personal freedom by trying to stick a needle in my arm without consent, bring at least four police officers with you, you are going to need them.”

Wow. I know his TV agent dumped him, but that’s a long way to go for a headline reading “Laurence Fox in cop drama”. Also, you’re going to need one police officer, tops, and could probably do it with a community support officer with a bad back. Still, what’s not to be amused by in the way Laurence pictures vaccination rollout, where the actual secretary of state for health arrives at his flat/faux-boho stockade with four police officers and a big syringe? Perhaps our hero wrote the tweet “after lunch” (an increasingly elastic timeframe, by the looks of things).

Back in the rational world, and without wishing to go out on a limb here, it is fair to say the vaccine is INCREDIBLY GOOD NEWS. And being the first country to approve the vaccine, and therefore the first custodian of said incredibly good news – well, that allows the UK to be positive, magnanimous, gracious and encouraging to the other countries and blocs just behind us in the quest to end the virus that has caused, and continues to cause, death, economic devastation, and loss of freedom and normality all over the world.

Cut to Gavin Williamson’s Thursday morning radio appearance on LBC. “I just reckon,” reckoned the education secretary, “we’ve got the very best people in this country and we’ve obviously got the best medical regulator, much better than the French have, much better than the Belgians have, much better than the Americans have. That doesn’t surprise me at all, because we’re a much better country than every single one of them.” And yet, if that’s the case, explain how our education secretary is Gavin Williamson?

In fairness to Gavin, if you actually listen to the clip, it does seem as if he was attempting a joke. And again, in fairness to him, it does seem that he was also attempting some kind of joke back when he made his famous suggestion that Vladimir Putin’s Russia should “go away and shut up”. On these pieces of evidence, then, the results are in. The statement “the secretary of state was attempting a joke” belongs in the same category of outcome as “the secretary of state was attempting to bath a toaster”. Don’t do it, Gav. It ends badly.

[Brian Peacock]

They're basically indistinguishable from religious zealots these days. And their god is Mammon.

[Scot Dutchy]

I mean, as a negotiation point it's a fair issue. If you're, say, a Dutch factory ship owner with a 10 year lease on 50% of the UK's cod quota you really want to know that you can still get access to UK waters post-Brexit. But the way the Tory press have talked this particular point up - and dragged the rest of the media along with them - smells like spin to me: something emotive that the public can be made to feel hashtag-outraged about. "They want to come over here and steal our fish from our waters and put our plucky British fisherman out of business? No Johnny Foreigner - go home, else we'll fight you on the beaches!" As I said, more jobs have just been lost on the high street than if the UK fishing industry was suddenly raptured out of existence, and over 60% of pubs and restaurants have said they don't know if they'll still be trading in 3 months time. The Tory press aren't hashtag-outraged about that. But then again, this isn't about people's livelihoods is it - it's about money.

That is all Brexit is about; their money.

[Brian Peacock]

...

The UK’s entire automotive industry was worth £49bn in 2019, of which £16bn was manufacturing, according to the Office for National Statistics. In the same year, fishing and aquaculture was worth £446m, less than 3% of the size of the under-threat car manufacturing sector alone.

...

Output from financial and insurance activities – a large proportion of which is carried out in London – was £125bn last year. Yet the government quickly gave up on the City’s hopes for special access to the European market, and there are still questions about whether Brussels will view UK firms as equivalent to their EU rivals in a regulatory sense after 1 January. Bankers have been the subject of public and political ire since the global financial crisis of 2007-08, but it is clear that the focus on fishing risks neglecting the basic functioning of much weightier parts of the economy.

Lord Liddle, a veteran of European trade negotiations who advised Peter Mandelson when the latter was the EU’s trade commissioner, said Brussels’ negotiators will have organised their strategy around offensive and defensive interests. That approach does not seem to have been mirrored on the UK side, with the British government giving up on securing favourable rules of origin – which decide whether cars made with imported parts will attract tariffs – while holding firm on fishing.

“To have ended up with this great row about fishing suggests to me they haven’t made those calculations,” he said. ...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... s-homework

[Scot Dutchy]

So true. Johnson is pinning all his hopes of a no-deal on this one area. It is just unbelievable. He is so much like Trump.

[JimC]

This thread has become a Brian/Scot love fest...