Brexit discussion thread XII (Please read OP before posting)

Sam Russell

Lemming wrote: »

The general sentiment I encountered at time amongst those that either did not vote, or voted against AV was "haven't a clue so better the devil I think I know and understand". That and the UK (as a general notion) doesn't _get_ what a referendum is, how to conduct one, or what it means to vote in one as opposed to your garden-variety-lies-included election.

The AV referendum was deliberately set to fail by asking a fudged question instead of a direct Yes or No to FPTP.

It was asked about an unclear 'Alternative Vote' that was not clear what was meant, and not meant to be clear even to the point of being ridiculed. It was rushed, again deliberately, and was run to appease the LibDem faction, and in a dishonorable way. (Where have we seen that before or since?)

They need a written constitution, not one run on precedent - because if they cannot find a useful precedent even back as far as the Magna Carta, they make one up.

Charles Babbage

Lemming wrote: »

The general sentiment I encountered at time amongst those that either did not vote, or voted against AV was "haven't a clue so better the devil I think I know and understand". That and the UK (as a general notion) doesn't _get_ what a referendum is, how to conduct one, or what it means to vote in one as opposed to your garden-variety-lies-included election.

If you don't know, vote no. This is not a bad principle, but why on earth did they vote for Brexit when they hadn't a clue what would happen?

Sam Russell

Charles Babbage wrote: »

If you don't know, vote no. This is not a bad principle, but why on earth did they vote for Brexit when they hadn't a clue what would happen?

It was not a YES / NO question - deliberately formed to defeat that slogan.

Leroy42

Charles Babbage wrote: »

If you don't know, vote no. This is not a bad principle, but why on earth did they vote for Brexit when they hadn't a clue what would happen?

They did know what would happen, as they were repeatedly told that only good things would happen.

Easiest trade deal in history, 350m per week for NHS, less bureaucracy, less immigration, more jobs, and getting rid of all those terrible laws forced on them by the EU elites.

Cookie_Monster

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Most British people support extending the transition period. Even with Leave voters, the majority against it is only slight:

https://twitter.com/yougov/status/1247914921855254529?lang=en

Honestly at this stage so what? What's the same number for all of Europe, because that is the important statistic, not what the Brits think at this stage. If Europeans as a whole still have an appetite for dealing with the UK, then fine, but I reckon most on the continent are sick of the whole thing now and can't wait to be rid of them.

Peregrinus

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Honestly at this stage so what? What's the same number for all of Europe, because that is the important statistic, not what the Brits think at this stage. If Europeans as a whole still have an appetite for dealing with the UK, then fine, but I reckon most on the continent are sick of the whole thing now and can't wait to be rid of them.

UK views matter because it's the UK that is the barrier to extension. The WA contains a mechanism for extending transition and the EU is open to exercising it, but the UK is not, and has sought to preclude the possibility in its domestic law. It's the UK that would have to change its position for extension to become even a possibility, and of course in making such a change the UK government might be sensitive to public opinion in the UK, but not at all to public opinion in the EU.

BonnieSituation

Enzokk wrote: »

So this seems a total normal way to answer a question about a Brexit extension from Gove.

https://twitter.com/LaylaMoran/status/1257346992780578819?s=20

Basically if I understand his answer, we won on the 12th December last year so we will do what we want.

Layla Moran is actually incorrect, the British people DO NOT deserve better.

BonnieSituation

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Excellent graph on trust. Very reassuring that British people see the Tory press for what it is - dishonest.

It's not really reassuring though, if they still lap up the lies and dishonesty from these papers that they believe are dishonest.

I'd be happier to see them believe their press was incredibly trustworthy. At least then, they believe what they read and it's a case of mass delusion.

This just reads to me as a case of mass insanity.

BonnieSituation

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Most of this is due to devolution bringing about the rise of regional parties in Scotland and Wales, without the regional party bias it worked quite well.
Plus the complications that devolution have actually brought about, you now basically have two parliaments in one, the UK parliament, and the English parliament.

They tried to devolve power to the English regions and that fell at the first hurdle. So they have exactly what they want it seems.

Sam Russell

BonnieSituation wrote: »

They tried to devolve power to the English regions and that fell at the first hurdle. So they have exactly what they want it seems.

It was only tried by holding a referendum in the North East (read Sunderland) and one of the campaigners against was a certain Dominic Cummins (yes, that one).

No further attempts at devolution have been tried apart from directly elected mayors.

Lemming

Charles Babbage wrote: »

If you don't know, vote no.

The point being - perhaps poorly made - that the level of knowledge and engagement with the public around the AV vote referendum was shockingly bad. Even more so than Brexit if that's possible to believe.

The public at large did not know or understand what this vote was about and what it would mean for them.

BonnieSituation

Sam Russell wrote: »

It was only tried by holding a referendum in the North East (read Sunderland) and one of the campaigners against was a certain Dominic Cummins (yes, that one).

No further attempts at devolution have been tried apart from directly elected mayors.

Yup. It failed at the first hurdle.

looksee

BonnieSituation wrote: »

It's not really reassuring though, if they still lap up the lies and dishonesty from these papers that they believe are dishonest.

I'd be happier to see them believe their press was incredibly trustworthy. At least then, they believe what they read and it's a case of mass delusion.

This just reads to me as a case of mass insanity.

It may well be mass insanity, I think though it has more to do with indifference and laziness of thought. The 'rag' press is purchased for the sport, sex and gossip. These are generally accepted and discounted on the trust scale. The rest of the paper, where headlines are casually taken in are what are not trusted, because its easier to absorb it then say you don't trust it, cos that's what you say, innit? It is not, in other words, a considered opinion. It has little to do with the publications and everything to do with the consumers.

serfboard

Leroy42 wrote: »

They did know what would happen, as they were repeatedly told that only good things would happen.

... and that bad things would happen if they stayed in the EU.

To see this in action watch "Brexit: The Uncivil War" now on Netflix and see Dominic Cummings repeat his mantra in the final weeks: "350 million a week and Turkey, 350 million a week and Turkey ..."

Both were lies, of course.

54and56

looksee wrote: »

It may well be mass insanity, I think though it has more to do with indifference and laziness of thought. The 'rag' press is purchased for the sport, sex and gossip. These are generally accepted and discounted on the trust scale. The rest of the paper, where headlines are casually taken in are what are not trusted, because its easier to absorb it then say you don't trust it, cos that's what you say, innit? It is not, in other words, a considered opinion. It has little to do with the publications and everything to do with the consumers.

Reminds me of the summer I spent 3-4 KM's from Ballinaspittle. People wanted to believe the statue was moving so they "saw" and justified the statue moving.

The funniest incident during the summer was when a bus load of believers on the way to Ballinaspittle from Cork City stopped in the village 7km before Ballinaspittle called Ballinadee. It too has a Grotto with a statue of mary on the want into the town.



Out hopped the brexiteers believers and onto their knees ooghing and aaghing at the statue and how they were witnessing a miracle until one of the locals told them they were at the wrong grotto. Queue a hasty return to the bus and mild embarrassment but they weren't knocked off their mission to see the Ballinaspittle statue move despite personal evidence less than 30 minutes previously that what they were actually witnessing and wilfully participating in was mass hysteria.



Brexit is perhaps the greatest moving statue ever.

farmerval

Watching the paper review on Sky the other night when it had been confirmed that Britian had the highest death toll in the UK most of the papers led with the guy on the steering committee who broke the lock down to meet his lover.

It really showed where their heads are.

serfboard

farmerval wrote: »

Watching the paper review on Sky the other night when it had been confirmed that Britian had the highest death toll in the UK most of the papers led with the guy on the steering committee who broke the lock down to meet his lover.

All the indications now are that that story had been kept in quarantine (;)), to be released on a day when bad news (like the UK topping the Covid European death league) had to be buried. And their oligarchically-owned newspapers were only too happy to oblige.

As always, Parody Boris Johnson tells it like it is, and the fact that The Guardian did not comply

Enzokk

Phil Hogan is saying that the UK is pushing for a WTO trade deal and will use the Covid-19 pandemic as cover for the economic fallout,

No sign Britain wants EU trade talks to succeed - EU trade chief

There is no real sign that Britain is approaching trade talks with the European Union with a plan to succeed and it appears set to blame any post-Brexit fallout on the economic shock from COVID-19, the EU’s trade chief said on Thursday.

“Despite the urgency and enormity of the negotiating challenge, I am afraid we are only making very slow progress in the Brexit negotiations. There is no real sign that our British friends are approaching the negotiations with a plan to succeed. I hope I am wrong, but I don’t think so,” European Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan told Irish national broadcaster RTE.

“I think that the United Kingdom politicians and government have certainly decided that COVID is going to be blamed for all the fallout from Brexit and my perception of it is they don’t want to drag the negotiations out into 2021 because they can effectively blame COVID for everything.”

reslfj

Enzokk wrote: »

Phil Hogan is saying that the UK is pushing for a WTO trade deal and will use the Covid-19 pandemic as cover for the economic fallout,

No sign Britain wants EU trade talks to succeed - EU trade chief

“I think that the United Kingdom politicians and government have certainly decided that COVID is going to be blamed for all the fallout from Brexit ...”

When an efficient corona vaccine is general available, the feeling will be that the pandemic will be over in both the UK and within the EU27.

The EU27 countries will recover fast and return to normal growth - not fantastic growth, but OK.
The 450 million in the SM and the 60+ FTAs will make wonders.

There will for a period likely be 5-10% unused capacity in the EU27 production economy and this, I believe, will be used to move many supply chains fully into EU27 (and EEA).
The recovery after corona will so to speak give many EU27 companies the break they need to change vendors and other EU27 companies a spare capacity they will need to seek new customers for.

The UK will recover maybe half the corona GDP loss fairly fast too - e.g internal service and shops - but the UK production sector may never get their continental customers back and the UK growth will be mediocre.

It won't help either, that the UK financial sector will have a much more powerful competition located within the EU27.

When the economy in fr,be, nl, de, dk, se, fi, pl, cz, sk, at, ch and even industrial Italy recover fully and the UK continues to be half but still very hard hit on employment and GDP - the Brits can blame HMG or Brexit or both.

Lars

fash

reslfj wrote: »

When the economy in fr,be, nl, de, dk, se, fi, pl, cz, sk, at, ch and even industrial Italy recover fully and the UK continues to be half but still very hard hit on employment and GDP - the Brits can blame HMG or Brexit or both.

Lars

No the deluded will continue to blame the EU for punishing them.

Dyr

big assumption that theres going to be a vaccine anytime soon.

Nody

Bambi wrote: »

big assumption that theres going to be a vaccine anytime soon.

I think there will be a vaccine; however an effective vaccine is 2021+ territory imo. There's simply to much money on the table not to get something out in 2020 in some form by multiple companies (because you know Trump will want a US based one, India/China will have another one etc.) but it's effectiveness, side effects and efficiency are most likely not at the level you'd normally expect but it will allow the governments of the world to open things up and blame the vaccine if it fails. Which ironically for Brexiteers is bad news because the distraction with the Corona virus and the impact on the economy etc. goes away and the topic of Brexit and the deal with EU comes back up again.

Retr0gamer

Bambi wrote: »

big assumption that theres going to be a vaccine anytime soon.

It's a pretty simple corona virus so not that hard to make an effective vaccine. It's the clinical trials and approvals which take a long time. I see people saying 'HIV doesn't have a vaccine' but HIV is a retro virus and a completely different proposition because it mutates so fast.

CelticRambler

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It's a pretty simple corona virus so not that hard to make an effective vaccine.

Except that coronaviruses have defied all attemps to make effective vaccines for the last fifty years.

In any case, for the purposes of this/Lars' point, the word "vaccine" can be considered short-hand for "a rapid and reliable predictive test in combination with an effective treatment protocol that significantly reduces the rate of mortality"

Once the majority of the population are satisfied that either (a) they're not going to develop Covid-19 because they're in the zero-to-low risk category; or (b) if they do catch it, they'll be out of hospital within a week and back to work by the end of the month; then there'll be no electoral advantage in trying to keep people from engaging in all the risky behaviours they enjoyed up until Christmas.

There's precious little money in vaccine manufacturing, so once the threat of death recedes, Big Pharma's interest will evaporate like the morning dew.

weemcd

I didn't think it was possible, but Ingsoc are really going to have to ramp up their nonsense stories once Covid and Brexit are done, if either are ever done, to explain how terribly they have left the economy in Britain.

Bambi

Bambi wrote: »

big assumption that there's going to be a vaccine anytime soon.

By the time one is developed, this particular strain of the virus will have burnt out, and no longer a danger.

Leroy42

I 100% with Phil Hogan on this, has been my feeling for a while. There is no logical reason not to extend, which the government have repeatedly stated they will not do, except that they are going to use the massive impacts of Covid as cover for any Brexit issues.

The drops in GDP etc from Covid dwarf anything that was being projected from even the hardest of Brexit, so good luck to anyone trying to separate out the two. The massive government interventions required for Covid means that any 'plans' they had to provide extra resources for the NH etc, as they promised, will just, unfortunately, not be possible due to Covid.

Also, you can be pretty sure that the UK are banking the EU being adverse to imposing any factors that may lead to shortages in the UK either during a second wave or whilst the UK is trying to get back on its feet after Covid.

serfboard

weemcd wrote: »

I didn't think it was possible, but Ingsoc are really going to have to ramp up their nonsense stories once Covid and Brexit are done, if either are ever done, to explain how terribly they have left the economy in Britain.

Nice 1984 reference, but you obviously haven't been reading up on the favourite reading of Messrs Johnson and Trump, "Authoritarianism for Dummies", Chapter 1:

"Whatever good thing happens is because of the amazing, fantastic, tremendous work that I did. Whatever bad thing happens is clearly someone else's fault".

reslfj

I wrote the following, but did not explicitly include the "then" now added.

reslfj wrote: »

When an efficient corona vaccine is general(ly) available, the feeling will be that the pandemic will be over in both the UK and within the EU27.

then

reslfj wrote: »

The EU27 countries will recover fast ...

The UK will recover maybe half the corona GDP loss fairly fast too ... and the UK growth will be mediocre.

I did not give a time for a vaccine, but only assumed it will come and that most people will then feel "we are out of the woods".

There are over 120 corona vaccines being developed world wide, 11 are already in phase 1 and the FDA/US just yesterday granted Moderna a phase 2 permission.

https://vac-lshtm.shinyapps.io/ncov_vaccine_landscape/
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/fda-approves-moderna-vaccine-candidate-for-phase-2-study.html

They can of course all fail and confirm Murphy's law, but by far the most likely outcome will be, that some of the vaccines will work sufficiently well to kill off the pandemic - at least in our part of the world.

So that was the scenario I assumed.

Bambi wrote: »

big assumption that theres going to be a vaccine anytime soon.

No it is not a 'big assumption' and as written above i didn't assumed any specific timing.

Nody wrote: »

I think there will be a vaccine; however an effective vaccine is 2021+ territory imo...
There's simply to much money on the table....

If asked, I think this is a very 'middle of the road' assumption for the timing. The money on the table is next to the entire world economy.

Lars

CelticRambler

reslfj wrote: »

There are over 120 corona vaccines being developed world wide, 11 are already in phase 1 and the FDA/US just yesterday granted Moderna a phase 2 permission.

https://vac-lshtm.shinyapps.io/ncov_vaccine_landscape/
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/fda-approves-moderna-vaccine-candidate-for-phase-2-study.html

They can of course all fail and confirm Murphy's law, but by far the most likely outcome will be, that some of the vaccines will work sufficiently well to kill off the pandemic - at least in our part of the world.

So that was the scenario I assumed.

Alas, that is a "big assumption" because by far the most likely outcome is that every one of these rushed projects will fail, just like the more carefully planned and executed efforts of the past. There are multiple points of failure along the path, not least the troublesome problem that the likelihood of catching the disease is not reliably linked to catching an infection. That's before you've got to deal with the problem of whether or not artificially stimulated antibody production can protect against a natural occurring infection, especially in the most vulnerable people. And then you've the practical problem of producing enough of the relevant vaccine before the infection fades into insignificance.

No Big Pharma company will take a gamble on that kind of uncertainty, so all the money that's being collected/donated is going to smaller units - university labs, public-private partnerships, odd-bods in their basement - no-one with anywhere near the functional capacity to complete the clinical trials needed for authorisation, let alone manufacture the millions of doses that will be required. Big Pharma is being paid to stay in the game because it helps politicians save face if they can talk about something that everyone knows about, something that always works in the movies.

Back in the real world, vaccine manufacture is dying out, with shortages of many common vaccines now a fairly regular occurrence across Europe; Big Pharma is (quite rightly, IMO) putting their own resources into treatment, not prevention. And in the end, that's all that'll matter to Joe Voter - Am I going to die if I catch it? No? Well, then I want to take a risk and go to the pub ... This takes us back to the hidden cost of Brexit: as soon as any EU company gets its drug approved in one member state, it's approved for use in 27 and any close neighbour who decides to recognise the validity of the EU's approval process. If it's a British lab that comes up with a potentially useful drug, they'll have to seek two approvals at twice the price - one for the NHS and separate series of studies to send to the EMA.